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Security United States

Security Threat In the New Wiretapping Law 167

Posted by kdawson from the gateway-for-hackers dept.
The NSA wants automatic surveillance capabilities in telephone switches. But once such capabilities are built in, others could use them to intercept communications. Within 10 years this could render the US vulnerable to attacks from terrorist groups across the globe, as well as from the military establishments of other nations. "Such threats are not theoretical: In April 2004, phones belonging to members of the Greek government, including the prime minister, were spied on with wiretapping software that was misused."
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Security Threat In the New Wiretapping Law More

Security Threat In the New Wiretapping Law

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  • This is really creepy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @02:22AM (#20222039) Journal
    Only Communist China and North Korea have such interests in implementing technology like this. Hell Bejing already is monitored 24x7.

    I remember a quote from Reagan: "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

    My oh my has that come true. Sadly from the leader of his own party. Something needs to be done?

    • Re:This is really creepy (Score:5, Informative)

      by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @02:52AM (#20222173) Journal
      Only Communist China and North Korea have such interests in implementing technology like this. Hell Bejing already is monitored 24x7.

      Sadly, that is false. Nearly all nations are involved in this. In fact, the bulk of EU monitors everything now. Canada, Australia, etc are all moving to monitoring of their aliens (and citizens). US and Greece are NOT unusual in all this. They have simply got caught. Don't believe it? Ever wonder exactly why Britain, Poland, France, Italy and Germany have given us all sorts of interesting info about possible attacks? Where exactly do you think that they got it from?

      The funny thing, is that reagan has more to do with this than most leaders. He was a true believer in "war is peace", just like W.

      • Re:This is really creepy (Score:4, Insightful)

        by PhilHibbs ( 4537 ) <snarks@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @05:13AM (#20222679) Journal

        he funny thing, is that reagan has more to do with this than most leaders. He was a true believer in "war is peace", just like W.

        I was once taken in by a "closing down sale" where some guys at the front of a crowd fleeced people by selling them rubbish at inflated prices. They started out by effectively demonstrating their scam to the audience, where they get you to give money up front in return for an empty box, and war you not to fall for that trick. Then they pull exactly that trick and everyone fell for it. I bought the world's crappiest camera for £50, and this was over 10 years ago, that would be more like £100 now.

        Politics is similar, they warn you about loss of freedom, and then take away your freedom to protect you.

      • Don't believe it? Ever wonder exactly why Britain, Poland, France, Italy and Germany have given us all sorts of interesting info about possible attacks? Where exactly do you think that they got it from?
        Hmm, that's pretty weak reasoning imho. There are definitely more targeted ways of infiltrating terrorist groups than listening in on everyone's phone calls.

      • Re:This is really creepy (Score:4, Informative)

        by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @06:36AM (#20223043) Journal

        Ever wonder exactly why Britain, Poland, France, Italy and Germany have given us all sorts of interesting info about possible attacks? Where exactly do you think that they got it from?
        An argument from personal incredulity, [wikipedia.org] also known as argument from personal belief or argument from personal conviction, is no argument at all.

        There are two ways to deal with terrorism:
        A) The military model (Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition, warrantless wiretaps)
        B) The law enforcement model

        Almost all the cases of terrorism that we do hear about, have been discovered and dealt with through good old fashioned police work. Seriously, the police deal with terrorism in Britain [google.com], France, Italy and Germany (I have no clue about Poland). As a favor, I linked the first Google search for you.

        Because the USA is new to the "zomg terrorists!111" game, they've gone with the military model. It puts us in fairly poor company when you look at the international scene and has handicapped US efforts at generating human intel sources.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by djasbestos ( 1035410 )
          Yes. It's pretty bad when you play by the same basic rules as the bad guys (shoot first, ask questions later or never). And Bush (and his worshippers) wonder why (or disregard that) it's important to extend rights to terror suspects like the right to an attorney...because if we're promoting the rule of law, then we should lead by example, not by exception. Sure, we don't hack people's heads off with machetes, we just repeatedly drown them within an inch of their life.

      • US and Greece are NOT unusual in all this.

        IF you knew what you were talking about, you would know that Greece deliberately chose not to purchase the "centralized wiretaping" option for their telecom switches. It was only because of software "modularity" that the software was still in the switch, it was just disabled without the proper licensing codes. The eavesdroppers in the Greece case were able to hack the switches and enable the centralized wiretapping functions for their own purposes.

        If Greece really were doing the centralized wiretapping t

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Our current administration is NOTHING like Reagan's, outside the label.

        Actually, there were a lot of the same faces back then as there are in the last few years. The difference was, Wolfowitz, Rove, Rummy, et al didn't have 1/100th the power they scammed up with this administration. Back then, they were paying their dues...

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This cartoon [chicagotribune.com] on this page [chicagotribune.com] of today's Chicago Tribune says it all. Too bad you have to use bugmenot to see it.

      Half a million Americans dead from the tobacco companies each year, another half million from McDonald's trans fats each year, fewer than three thousand dead on American soil from muslim extremists this entire century. Bin Laden should buy stock in RJ Reynolds and Burger King if he wants to kill us, the piker! I'm far more scared of the corporate terrorists than that idiot. BTW, 40,000 Americans die
  • Isn't having 'automatic wiretapping' just as great of an idea as having a firewall with a deliberate backdoor?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by farkus888 ( 1103903 ) *
      You are exactly right.

      In many fields it appears people think in simple problem - implement solution form. Those of us who have training and experience coding or other complex technology have been retrained to think in a problem - evaluate repercussions of potential solution - implement solution form. Usually with quite a few loops over the evaluate repercussions phase because the initial solution was unsatisfactory.

      Maybe the solution to the short comings in our government is to force them to take and pass

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by heinousjay ( 683506 )
        Maybe the solution to the short comings in our government is to force them to take and pass advanced programming classes before being allowed to take office.

        Good demonstration of an unsatisfactory initial solution.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by SL Baur ( 19540 )

        Maybe the solution to the short comings in our government is to force them to take and pass advanced programming classes before being allowed to take office.

        They do not even read the bills they pass. This is wishful thinking at best.

        Automatic sunset laws (with a super-majority vote required to extend -- if it's a good law, why isn't 2/3 or 3/4 or 4/5 majority a reasonable idea) and a requirement that lawmakers actually prove they read the bills before they are allowed to vote YEA on them would work for me. Of course, this would slow down the amount of new things government would be allowed to do, that is, in my opinion, a _good_ thing.

        Sigh, I admit to living

        • Automatic sunset laws (with a super-majority vote required to extend -- if it's a good law, why isn't 2/3 or 3/4 or 4/5 majority a reasonable idea) and a requirement that lawmakers actually prove they read the bills before they are allowed to vote YEA on them would work for me. Of course, this would slow down the amount of new things government would be allowed to do, that is, in my opinion, a _good_ thing.

          IIRC, the People's Bureaucratic Republic of Colorado used to have a nifty sunset law. And, IIRC, it

    • No, not quite. A firewall with a backdoor pretends to care about your privacy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RuBLed ( 995686 )
      As long as they don't use speech to text engines to document the calls otherwise I would no longer call my mom....
  • ...if you have nothing to hide, what are you afraid of?

    • Re:Just keep telling yourself... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @03:27AM (#20222301)
      I'm afraid of laws turning from legal to illegal what used to be normal pastime and normal behaviour. Germany just recently outlawed "hacking tools", most of which are perfectly fine tools to monitor and audit the security of your own box. Copyright laws becoming more and more intrusive, to the point where copyright holders want to control the tools you use to play their content.

      I'm not breaking the law. But I'm quite afraid of me not changing my behaviour and yet still being a criminal over night, without even noticing. Even under different circumstances, the chance that a law gets passed that outlaws what used to be normal practice is nonzero. Under these circumstances, it's even likely.

      So that's what I'm afraid of when I'm giving up privacy. That for some reason what I do might be considered illegal in the forseeable future. And, well, ya know, when he's been doing it while it was legal, will he continue when it's illegal? Even if I cease to do it, I'll be watched with suspicion and should I be tried, whether justified or innocent, my past actions (back when they were legal) will be used against me, with the allegation that I might have continued to do so when it was outlawed. It's also a convenient pretense when a warrant is necessary against me.

      Yes, I do not trust the government of my country. Why the hell should I? They don't trust me neither.
      • I'm not breaking the law.

        Nobody can say that with any credible confidence.

        It takes a minimum of 3 years of training and years of experience on top of that to know what is legal within a subset of the law, and even then it takes due diligence to keep up because the law constantly changes.

        In my opinion, one has to be a confident and comfortable lier and a borderline sociopath to be normal, and that does not seem normal to me.

        • Ok, let's say I don't break any law consciously. I don't know if there are any stupid laws in existance that disallow e.g. wearing socks while having sex or something silly like that. Let's just say I don't break any law that can at least somehow be explained with common sense, logic and some sense of common courtesy. And, frankly, those are also the only ones I care about.

          The only laws that really matter are laws that can be enforced.

    • Re:Just keep telling yourself... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @04:28AM (#20222509) Homepage
      If they have nothing to hide, why is it secret wire tapping and secret warrants.

      If they have nothing to hide, why isn't every communication between lobbyists and politicians recorded and publicly declared.

      If they have nothing to hide, why is not the activity of every law enforcement officer recorded whilst they are on duty, rather than a taser to torture why not a video camera to record.

      If they have nothing to hide, why secret no fly lists.

      Let's all of us give up our secrets and privacy at the same time or maybe lets start with the people who are in such a hurry to take our privacy whilst keeping their own dirty secrets, which will be the most interesting, our little white lies, or the massive whoppers of the corrupt corporate executives, the typical lying politician, the abusive power freak law enforcement officer, and of course the biggest liars of all lobbyists.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *
        I love that the same people who are the first to give the "If you haven't done anything, you shouldn't be worried about people spying on you" line are also the first to raise Hell when Congress subpoenas Harriet Miers, Karl Rover, etc. to ask them questions. I mean, if they haven't done anything wrong, what are they afraid of?

    • ...if you have nothing to hide, what are you afraid of?
      Yep. As long as those in charge the whole thing are benign and competent, there's nothing to worry about. And we all know that our present and all future administrations are sure to be benign and competent, don't we?

  • Wrong front, soldier (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BadAnalogyGuy ( 945258 ) <BadAnalogyGuy@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @02:26AM (#20222063)
    If you're arguing that mandatory wiretapping ports are a bad idea because they make the system vulnerable to attack, are you then saying that you would not be opposed to such ports if there were no security threat posed by them?

    When you muddy the waters to fight only the battle right in front of you, you risk losing sight of the bigger goals and make yourself vulnerable to counterattacks.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by timmarhy ( 659436 )
      err, learn to read and you might see that's far from the only concern being voiced. there is no muddying of the waters, the danger is clear.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by BadAnalogyGuy ( 945258 )
        Let me figure out what concerns are being voiced here. Here's the summary:

        The NSA wants automatic surveillance capabilities in telephone switches. But once such capabilities are built in, others could use them to intercept communications. Within 10 years this could render the US vulnerable to attacks from terrorist groups across the globe, as well as from the military establishments of other nations. "Such threats are not theoretical: In April 2004, phones belonging to members of the Greek government, inclu
        • Considering that the NSA doesn't even allow the internet onto their own campus, I doubt they want some remote capability for accessing this stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual data is physically moved, that is, never touches the network.

          The problem with FISA is that it is an old law that was inadequate to begin with. It wasn't designed for cell phones, voip, email, etc. It was designed for hard wired telephones that could be ascribed to a subscriber with pretty good accuracy. Today, you can

          • Even with a warrant, it's not an easy job to do.

            There's no law that says it should be. There ARE laws, however, saying that we have rights that cannot be violated, even when it would make the work of law enforcement easier.

            People don't seem to understand - law enforcement is hard ON PURPOSE. Those intentional roadblocks are there to protect the rights of the people, because you cannot trust people to respect the rights of others - you have to deny them those avenues instead, and here we are tearing them

        • But IN 10 YEARS, AMERICA WILL BE VULNERABLE TO TERRORIST ATTACKS!!! OMGWTF! This is laughable because we are actually, at any given time, vulnerable to attacks. The summary implies that these back doors will provide unfettered access to all sorts of high value communications and that the terrorists and other evil countries will use these systems to ATTACK US! OMG!

          Telephone switches are just computers. In 10 years they'll be obsolete. 10 years ago, Windows 95 was the Big Thing. The PC-AT was a big thing

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by wytcld ( 179112 )

      you would not be opposed to such ports if there were no security threat posed by them?

      This falls in the larger category of granting power to others. Given someone you can absolutely trust, both in their intent and the quality of their execution, we might grant them absolute power. This tempts us most when we believe they'll use the power for our good.

      There are three lines of argument against this:

      1. Our trust in intent may be misplaced: While this may be true, it's often not an effective argument in a democra

  • Revolution (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dotslashdot ( 694478 )
    Revolution.
    • OK, so what specifically do you propose?
    • Revolution

      Yes, I have no doubt the Founding Fathers are turning over in their graves.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by rdrd ( 1142449 )
      Revolutions are impossible, just because of that. Imagine trying to gather a critical mass of people with any of the monitored means of comm. You will be labeled (pronto) "enemy of the state" and your a** will rot in jail.
      Indeed, the paranoia transforms US, in such a way that now it reminds me of the former USSR. At least names start with same letters ...

      Avoiding warrants for these cases sounds simple, though potentially invasive of Americans' civil liberties.

      . The lady misuse the term "potentially". It's for sure.

  • Think of the children! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by th3rmite ( 938737 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @02:29AM (#20222083)
    We need this in order to protect our children from online predators! Once they track your children down they almost always attempt to call them first. We NEED safeguards for our children. To think otherwise must mean that you support child predators.

    • Re:Think of the children! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @03:31AM (#20222317)
      From a logical point of view, it's more reasonable to support child predators whan total surveillance. The former only threatens a part of society, the latter the whole.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by snero3 ( 610114 )

      To think otherwise must mean that you support child predators.

      Now I am all for protecting the innocent but to say that everyone else of with a different point of view to yours supports child predators is just ridiculous.

      How is installing monitoring software in all telephone switches going to stop child predators? Is there an army of people who are going to sit there and listen to all the phone calls going on? Is there a super computer that can understand all human speach patterns and languages that

  • If those implementing this type of thing know what they're doing, there is really no reason it can't be done securely. Simply require all "intercept-this-communication" messages should be digitally signed, etc, and keep the private key under lock and key, both physically and electronically. If it's leaked, have an update-key command on the switches to replace the old key with a new one, and replace any switches that attackers get to first. I absolutely agree that this is a serious invasion of privacy and

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by timmarhy ( 659436 )
      huh, what kind of simplistic world do you live in? "update key command" on several million routers, you must be fucking with us, because surely must see how that would never ever work.

      "But arguing against it because it has been poorly implemented and misused in the past is counterproductive."

      No, it shows a clear demonstration of how impossibly hopless it is to do this in a secure manner.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by farkus888 ( 1103903 ) *
      I have heard this argument before and am surprised its gone so long with no one debunking it. First of all no one I know has dropped the "privacy" side of this argument, the security risk is simply in addition to the privacy reasons. You also need to consider that the people who are making the decision have already proven on more than one occasion that they are indifferent to privacy implications of legislation like this. If we can convince them to preserve some facet of our ever dwindling privacy out of fe
    • And since you immediately know when the key is leaked, this is safe...

      The key problem of the security game is limited knowledge. It doesn't only matter that you know what your enemy knows. You also have to know what he knows that you know. Ya know? :)
    • Simply require all "intercept-this-communication" messages should be digitally signed, etc, and keep the private key under lock and key, both physically and electronically.

      And what happens when the person in charge of the key is a Russian or Chinese Mole? High level breaches have happened and its not far fetched it could happen again.
    • [sarcasm]Yeah, I mean it worked for Microsoft and their leaked Volume Keys. [/sarcasm]

      If even MS couldn't do it right, what makes you think the government can? And on something far more important to boot.

  • I don't get it-- what's new about this? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The article does not once mention CALEA [wikipedia.org], a law dating back to 1994 that mandates that phone companies provide a means for tapping your phone which is integrated into the switch and cannot be detected by the party being tapped. Also full records of the call must be maintained.

    Is this an Internet-level CALEA-like law at the TCP/IP switch? Or is this something different (TFA talks about fiber vs over-the-air communication.. huh?)

  • As seen on Bruce Schneier's blog 9-Aug-07 (Score:3, Informative)

    by Mathinker ( 909784 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @02:52AM (#20222175) Journal
    As seen on Bruce Schneier's blog [schneier.com].

  • Good Cop, Bad Cop (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's topics and comment like this that turn Slashdot into a comic. In Britain, the security services have a similar level of access to telephone calls. The American tendency to yap did catch on but new guidelines for the military have clamped down on sraying your soul into blogs, books, and the media. "Freedom" is a two edged sword. It helps people learn and holds people accountable but also informs enemies and gives them encouragement.

    I can't be bothered with freedom or repression, or many eyeballs versus

  • Surveillence (Score:4, Insightful)

    by El-Wrongo ( 1105293 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @03:09AM (#20222239)
    This is not good. What happens when people know that other people can listen to their conversations is that they watch what they say, which makes democracy (if that is your thing) loose its value. Democracy can only exist as long as there is free speech. When free speech disappears, so does democracy. In addition I believe that this will have negative consequences for gays, political activists, people with illnesses etc. No one but you and the people you tell something, have any right to know what that something is. There will be leaks, you can not prevent that without taking extreme measures.
    • ``This is not good. What happens when people know that other people can listen to their conversations is that they watch what they say, which makes democracy (if that is your thing) loose its value. Democracy can only exist as long as there is free speech.''

      Interestingly, Alexis de Tocqueville used a similar argument to claim that democracy makes people _less_ free than autoritarian government. The reasoning was (in a nut shell) that, in a totalitarian state, you are free to think whatever you want, so long
  • > Within 10 years this could render the US vulnerable to attacks from terrorist groups across the globe, as well as from the military establishments
    > of other nations.

    As suggested in Seven Days In May, Dr Strangelove or James Bamford's excellent book "Body Of Secrets", it's not just military establishments external to the US which should be worried about.
  • The U.S. government should not be concerned if they have nothing to hide... Right?
  • Within 10 years this could render the US vulnerable to attacks -- Doesn't anyone else think that this is actually the intention?

    Considering the US telephone 'system', it's like building your house out of wood and then giving bottles of petrol and packs of matches to all the local kids.

    Daftest idea I've read today, but it's still early.

  • Also... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SamP2 ( 1097897 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @04:21AM (#20222469)
    Didn't Hollywood teach you about the consequences of speaking about secret things over the phone?

    Sure, with the electronic surveillance systems phone spying may be easier to accomplish en masse, bringing us one step closer to Old Bro (which requires not only monitoring to be -possible-, but to be efficient enough to be performed, analyzed, and acted upon on a regular basis...

    But the truth still remains that phone networks were never, ever, EVER secure to begin with, and it would be naive to think that we were living in a safe and secure communications era until today.

    It has been a long standing tenet in communications security, from CIA-level to your local small business, that there is no such thing as a secure (physical) comms. line, and the only way to ensure security is to use encryption (at which case your security is as good as it's weakest link, be it the key strength, random gen. quality, social factor, or w/e). Well newsflash: that doesn't work in the analog phone system, and never has.

    If you need things kept secure, send them digitally encrypted. If you need things even more secure, don't transmit them at all. The public phone system has never been secure, nor will it ever be, whether against government interceptors or a teen phreaker. Live with it.

    • If you need things kept secure, send them digitally encrypted. If you need things even more secure, don't transmit them at all. The public phone system has never been secure, nor will it ever be, whether against government interceptors or a teen phreaker. Live with it.

      The question is, how long until Uncle Sam decides that anyone relying on encrypted communications must be a terrorist/pedophile/whatever? The government has *already* tried to tell us that we have no right to communications that they can't tap (remember the Clipper Chip?), and that was before Bush and Co. started *aggresively* attacking our civil rights...

  • >Within 10 years this could render the US vulnerable Why ten years?

  • Frightfully obvious. Once the hardware is installed, it opens up potential for massive abuse.

    The future will indeed be interesting.

  • The NSA already installed such a system in their "does not exist" fibre patching room inside the AT&T fibre facility.
  • ...as they snoop onto us.
  • Its always been about controlling the masses, sure they want you to think about all the wiretapping going on, but even in a perfect world, to have wiretaps on everybody 24/7 ...after a week, you would break the datawarehouse piggy bank. What this does, is dissuade any would be terrorist from getting any ideas going into fruition, and leaves the really bad ones in that category. By controlling the masses by fear (yet again amercia) we avoid the masses from sheeping too many bad ideas. Any idea which is diffe

  • So easy, even a child can explain it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bhmit1 ( 2270 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @08:31AM (#20223903) Homepage
    When your weapons are used against you, you have to wonder if you really needed that weapon in the first place. And people should question why we let you have that weapon. Of course this all assumes that people have an influence on the government, which seems like we haven't for quite a long time, if ever. But I digress, this can all be summed up by a child in a cartoon:
    Calvin and Hobbes [ucomics.com]

  • Let's Be Reasonable About This (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MarkPNeyer ( 729607 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @08:49AM (#20224059)

    Clearly, this isn't a partisan issue. The bill that just passed did so with the approval of the democratic controlled congress. People are playing partisan games over this because, unfortunately, it makes political sense to do so. Politics don't help anyone make rational decisions, though, so let's get them out of the way.

    Clearly, there is a security case to be made for listening to phone calls without warrants. If a known member of al-Qaeda makes a call into the united states, there isn't time to ask a judge to approve a wiretap. Even more clearly, the power to tap phones could very easily be abused. This is slashdot; we're all paranoid here. Having phones with built in mechanisms for wiretapping is just asking for all kinds of trouble.

    I think the most rational response to this is to recognize the usefulness of such a program, and then attempt to design one that is as impervious to manipulation as possible. General rules that have proven useful for this sort of thing in the past:

    • Distribution of Power - You don't want one guy making all the decisions. The problem with spreading power out too much here is that you'll completely ruin the effectiveness of the program. You can't wait for three committees and a judge to hear the case. Balance is needed.
    • Transparency - There needs to be a list made of all calls that have been recorded, along with the name of someone who approved this recording. This is risky because it exposes the people who made the decisions to liability, but i think that's a necessary risk in order to safeguard privacy. Especially when coupled with some sort of protection mechanism.
    • Protection - One of the reasons the bush administration likes secrecy so much is that people are more likely to make decisions when they know they're not going to be held accountable for them. It definitely sounds shady, but how many decisions would you make if you knew you'd be held liable (potentially criminally) for everything you did, by a group of people notorious for getting pissed off? Oftentimes decisions that made perfect sense at the time sound absurd in hindsight, and you're always going to be safer by ignoring potential problems than trying to act on them. The people making these decisions need to be guaranteed protection from harassment by groups like CAIR who'll undoubtedly continue their past behavior of attempting to use the legal system to bully anyone who tries to do anything to a moslem.

    Ultimately, though, it's not our laws that keep us safe. It's not the Constitution that protects our liberties. We are free because we have a culture that values freedom above almost all else. Personally, I think it's a culture worth aggressively defending. Will we sacrifice some freedom in the defense of freedom? Of course. From a historical perspective, all American wars have resulted in the citizenry being less free. Lincoln and Wilson both threw detractors in jail. Nobody is proposing that here. The loss of freedom is extremely mild from an historical perspective. When the struggle is over, the freedoms will return like they always have in the past, as long as we demand them, which we will. If you think the struggle is never going to be over; you're absolutely right. Until we get everybody in the country as committed to destroying al-qaeda as they are to protecting moslems from being offended and suspected terrorist's phone calls from being interpreted, nothing is going to get accomplished.

    • ``If a known member of al-Qaeda makes a call into the united states, there isn't time to ask a judge to approve a wiretap.''

      IIRC, there is no such need currently; they can start tapping and ask for permission later (within a bounded timeframe).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dave562 ( 969951 )
      If you think the struggle is never going to be over; you're absolutely right. Until we get everybody in the country as committed to destroying al-qaeda as they are to protecting moslems from being offended and suspected terrorist's phone calls from being interpreted, nothing is going to get accomplished.

      I am going to assume that you received the +1 Insightful mod for the first half of your post and not the second part that I quoted above. The struggle will never be over because it is a struggle that has b

  • This whole thing is crazy...

    The ??? (Insert 3 letter agency here) wants to be able to sit in their "cushy" cubicle and monitor phone calls at the push of a button. I can understand that they don't want to have to travel to the ends of the country to sit in a cramped switching station to monitor phone calls. (oh yeah, add internet connections to the list too) But I can see a few problems:

    1) Any sort of remote access tool is vulnerable. Period. This is a simple mathematical fact. All authentication schemes ca

    • 4 boxes... Soap (check) -> Ballot (check) -> Jury -> Ammo... looks to me like it's time for jury.
      Hrmmm let's add a 5th box ... "Mail"

      so now: Soap (Check) -> Ballot (Check) -> Mail (Check) -> Jury -> Ammo
    • This is where I think there's a crisis of communication with the American people. What percentage of everyday Americans of voting age really have their head around what's going on? Once the gov't has this kind of control with no oversight or audit trail, how can anyone reasonably expect it *won't* be used improperly? It seems by the time people figure out what's going on in numbers enough to do anything about it, the opportunity for bringing about change will have come and gone. Which is a familiar refr

      • This is where I think there's a crisis of communication with the American people. What percentage of everyday Americans of voting age really have their head around what's going on? Once the gov't has this kind of control with no oversight or audit trail, how can anyone reasonably expect it *won't* be used improperly? It seems by the time people figure out what's going on in numbers enough to do anything about it, the opportunity for bringing about change will have come and gone. Which is a familiar refrain, sadly.

        and yep, read your post, thought it was great. slide me one a them bonus points. :)

        You've hit the nail on the head. The state of education in the U.S. these days is very sad. Students aren't being taught critical thinking. Rather they are being taught to regurgitate stuff they are being told.

        Tie this in with what passes for news these days... There is very little actual reporting going on, much of what you see is commentary, and listening to talking heads argue the same points until the horse has died, been buried, decomposed, and reincarnated. Add in a bias presented in the "News" and y

  • The security threat lies in giving the NSA the ability to tap people's phones at all.
  • The NSA wants automatic surveillance capabilities in telephone switches. But once such capabilities are built in, others could use them to intercept communications. Within 10 years this could render the US vulnerable to attacks from terrorist groups across the globe, as well as from the military establishments of other nations.

    Gee, it's really nice to see an Orwellian initiative take a confidence hit due to paranoia over the very thing it's allegedly supposed to prevent. Ahh, the system works.

  • "Technology that makes communications interceptable by Good Guys probably makes communications interceptable by Bad Guys." Obvious, when you think about it.

    If you want to create some scary implications, Blackwater is starting its own "intelligence" agency. [hamptonroads.com] Being a private entity, 4th and 5th Amendment rules about search warrants and self-incrimination do not apply, although one must assume that any local/state/federal laws regarding monitoring and/or recording of communications would apply. You know, if

  • Forget (for a moment) who is doing this, and the hypocrisy of making things less secure in order to make us more secure. The "reasons" for it aside, it's happening. Communications were already insecure, but now it's just more "in your face" and a deliberate misfeature of the design.

    Society must deal with the fact that the networks can't be trusted, and as the segment of society who actually understands this stuff and knows how to solve it, the responsibility ultimately falls on us, the computer nerds. I

    • Although a supporter of encryption, I fit mostly in the "dropped the ball" category. I do not use e-mail encryption in part because I do all of my e-mail through the GMail web client and I do not know of any way to use encryption with that. Hints welcome; nothing like digital signatures at the end of e-mails to get friends to ask about encryption. Yes, I know I could use Thunderbird (err... Icedove ;) and POP/SMTP access, but I actually use GMail's labels and find Thunderbird a greatly inferior client compa

      • Hmmm... I just did a Google search and found FireGPG [tuxfamily.org] and Gmail S/MIME [jones.name]. FireGPG looks like what I want, although both are missing drafts support. That is, GMail autosaves drafts, and the proper thing to do, if possible, would be to encrypt the draft addressed to the user, but FireGPG ignores this problem (for now) and Gmail S/MIME disables autosaving entirely (for now). I will setup FireGPG and see how it works.
  • Well, there goes the international market for telecommunications gear manufactured in the USA.

    I'm sure the NSA's requirement only applies to US telecom systems. Foreign systems are free to install equipment without this capability. If I was CEO of a foreign telecom company, possibly in a country with more stringent privacy laws on the books than the USA, I wouldn't risk buying gear with possible back doors.

    Furthermore, I'd think twice about routing calls through systems owned by US companies, either on

    • I am sure that US telecom manufacturers can sell the same switch without the evesdropping card installed. In fact they probably have a different firmware load for the card depending on where the switch is going - one for China, another for England, one for Israel, one for Saudi Arabia one for Greece, etc. depending on what features the secret police of that country require.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        I am sure that US telecom manufacturers can sell the same switch without the evesdropping card installed.

        Not all eavesdropping technology requires 'a card'.


        In fact they probably have a different firmware load for the card depending on where the switch is going

        Only if the customers spec open source equipment and then do their own build and install.
        • It requires external network access and a software or firmware load. This is trivial for the manufacturer to leave the feature out of the product. No US manufacturer will lose export business because of this.

  • Telecom switches have had wiretapping capability for decades. CALEA has been in place since 1994. There is a string of complaints in various forums, but not one of them actually cites what the new law is.

    I don't think there is a new law. This is just the NSA trying to get an improvement in it's existing infrastructure.

    Where is this law?

  • They'll probably hire an Israeli company to do it.

    And Israelis have already been caught selling CALEA wiretap info to organized crime in LA in one case. According to Carl Cameron at Fox News (normally not the sort of place I'd go for news, but in this case...), departments in the FBI were highly upset that Israeli companies had excessive access to the software and systems running CALEA wiretaps.

    Israel has learned that the best way to spy on the world is to be the country who supplies the world with spying e

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