Alberto Gonzales gave a speech recently at Georgetown defending the Bush administration’s illegal wiretapping and spying. The students turned their back on him and a group of them marched in with a banner imprinted with a quote – “Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.” Three cheers for them. My only question is why is it that the first place I hear of this is on a livejournal site?
- Comment
- Reblog
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Dave's Place/Metamusing 
Actually it was all over the news – the New York Times had an article about it and I saw something on CNN.
LikeLike
“On the last night of the 1994 session, Congress enacted the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), sometimes called the “Digital Telephony” bill. CALEA requires telephone firms to make it easy to wiretap the nation’s communication system”
That was the first domino. That bill is full of stuff that makes things all too easy for the government.
Now you know why I have a circa 1980 desk phone and not a fancy new one on my desk at home.
LikeLike
In case you want to read up on more of this type of thing. The 2nd link is the CALEA bill sent to then President Clinton.
“The bill faced strong opposition from industry and civil liberties organizations”
I remember when the bill was passed. The ONLY person I heard mention it at the time was RUSH LIMBAUGH!
Things like this will only get worse as phone systems go VOIP making it easier to sniff conversations out with no wiretapping. Even Google is fending off attempts by the GOV to get search records.
http://www.epic.org/privacy/wiretap/
http://www.epic.org/privacy/wiretap/calea/calea_law.html
LikeLike
It would appear the answer to my question is ‘because I spend all my time on the net and not watching the networks’ 😉
LikeLike
Thanks for the epic links. I should write up a post about why VOIP and things like skype can solve this problem – if I encrypt using a public key algorythm, there’s not much the feds can do, and if they mandate that voip providers like skype provide a backdoor, as in that telecom act, all I need to is switch to one of the other open source VOIP apps, any of which could add public key encryption, or I can add it myself by tunelling the connection to anyone through an encrypted link.
It’s not that I have something to hide in my phone calls, in fact I barely use the phone at all, it’s the principle.
LikeLike
Well, those tricks would work for probably less than 1% of the population smart enough to do it.
Overall I am not surprised/shocked/offended by this action. I think I take for granted that it has always gone on to some extent. I suppose I should be more surprised/shocked/offended, but damn, I’m tired and it wears me out.
Just don’t scream bomb’s on the presidents head in the phone and you will probably be ok, but I agree with your sentiment that it is the principle of the act that shames us as a supposed “free” nation of liberties etc…
Now it is time to CHEAT ON MY TAXES!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
LikeLike