Big brother

[GomJabbar]

From: The New York Times, Published: December 10, 2005 Link: Live Tracking of Mobile Phones Prompts Court Fights on Privacy (Subscription required, but free)

I'm sure all you Techies are up-to-date on this, but if not.......

Cellular operators like Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless know, within about 300 yards, the location of their subscribers whenever a phone is turned on. Even if the phone is not in use it is communicating with cellphone tower sites, and the wireless provider keeps track of the phone's position as it travels. The operators have said that they turn over location information when presented with a court order to do so.
-------------------------------
But it is unclear how often prosecutors have asked courts for the right to obtain cell-tracking data as a suspect is moving. And the government is not required to report publicly when it makes such requests.
-------------------------------
Mr. Fishman said he believed that the number of requests had become more prevalent in the last two years - and the requests have often been granted with a stroke of a magistrate's pen.

[Rob Mayercik]

From: The New York Times, Published: December 10, 2005 Link: Live Tracking of Mobile Phones Prompts Court Fights on Privacy (Subscription required, but free)

Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't suppose you could be bothered to actually post the text of the article? I have no interest in subscribing to the NY Times - I get too much junk email as it is already.

Besides, I live in NJ, so why should I subscribe to NY media? I rarely if ever see much recognition of NJ's existance as it is from them, and the local cable company is even worse - over the years, I have seen virtually every Philadelphia-based network dropped in favor of the NY version. And I live closer to PA than I do NY.

If they're going to let just anyone subscribe for free, why not save me and themselves the bother and just let me see it with no strings attached?

Rob

[JaneL]

Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't suppose you could be bothered to actually post the text of the article? I have no interest in subscribing to the NY Times - I get too much junk email as it is already.

Just use userid and password to get in. (That works on many sites, BTW.)

[GomJabbar]

I don't suppose you could be bothered to actually post the text of the article? I have no interest in subscribing to the NY Times - I get too much junk email as it is already.

I did quote a couple of highlights from the article, however the article it too long to post here. I am sure most of the other readers would rather I not post an entire article.

You can register with the NYT and choose not to get any e-mail from them. If you do choose to do so, you can get a daily e-mail from the NYT with headlines and brief article descriptions including links, for the newspaper sections you are interested in.

Besides, I live in NJ, so why should I subscribe to NY media? I rarely if ever see much recognition of NJ's existance as it is from them, and the local cable company is even worse - over the years, I have seen virtually every Philadelphia-based network dropped in favor of the NY version. And I live closer to PA than I do NY.

I guess as you are from Jersey, the NY antipathy is kicking in.
Oh well, I have my antipathies too.

[egibbs]

Posting excerpts is considered Fair Use, while posting the entire article would be a copyright violation.

Rob - The Bugmenot extension works well if you are using Firefox - it automatically finds valid anonymous logins for sites that require registration.

Ed Gibbs

[GomJabbar]

Posting excerpts is considered Fair Use, while posting the entire article would be a copyright violation.

Thanks for the clarification. I'll take your word for it. I was kind of hoping that I wasn't breaking any rules or laws by quoting excerpts from published articles. At any rate I always try to clearly attribute any quotes to the source.

I've been to busy (or lazy) to read through the copyright statutes. I figured I would probably just get my hand slapped and be warned off if I was in violation. What is it they say about ignorance? - Oh never mind.

[dsvochak]

I've been indisposed, not in captivity. In any case, two articles and quotes. The first is http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar ... /512160432

"Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years..."

The second article is this http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/ ... TE=DEFAULT

"The Senate on Friday rejected attempts to reauthorize several provisions of the USA Patriot Act as infringing too much on Americans' privacy and liberty, dealing a huge defeat to the Bush administration and Republican leaders.

In a crucial vote early Friday, the bill's Senate supporters were not able to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a threatened filibuster by Sens. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and their allies. The final vote was 52-47."

One small, and perhaps temporary step, for the good guys.

[GomJabbar]

A little off-topic, but here goes. [I didn't want to start a new thread]

From The New York Times, Published: December 16, 2005 Link: Secular Democracy Goes on Trial (subsription required, but free)

WHEN in 1989 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran sentenced Salman Rushdie to death, saying he had blasphemed the Prophet Muhammad in his novel "The Satanic Verses," it was seen even in the Islamic world as an act of political opportunism, intended to boost Iran over its rival Saudi Arabia as the beacon of global Islam.
-----------------------
The ayatollah's fatwa however created what, in retrospect, seems an extraordinary ideological consensus among the largely secularized Western intelligentsia. Writing in Mr. Rushdie's defense, novelists, poets, newspaper editors and columnists painted themselves as defenders of the European Enlightenment battling the dark atavism of religion.
-----------------------
...after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Many conservative intellectuals in the United States and Britain declared their resolve to fight to the bitter end against "Islamo-fascism"; and even the more liberal intellectuals demanded an immediate Islamic Reformation.

But these familiar generalities - Enlightenment versus Religion, Democracy versus Fascism - have always been facile, and are now being exploded by the ordeal of another prominent writer of Muslim ancestry, Orhan Pamuk, who goes on trial in Turkey today.

Mr. Pamuk is accused of a committing a crime by mentioning, in an interview with a Swiss newspaper, that "a million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds" were killed in Turkey after World War I. The Armenian massacres are a widely documented fact. But it is an officially taboo subject in Turkey; and the government, nationalist political groups and press immediately joined in attacking Mr. Pamuk.
-----------------------
So what explains this latest Turkish assault on free speech? It won't do to blame religious extremists. Most of Mr. Pamuk's detractors belong to the political right wing, which in Turkey means that they are determined secularists. The prosecutor who instigated the legal proceedings belongs to a longstanding secular Turkish state that has cracked down on Muslim women wearing headscarves more harshly than has France.

What does seem apparent is that, like all nation-states, Turkey has its own sacred nationalist myths and will protect them as fiercely as, if not more than, any society claming the sanction of religion. This state-sponsored nationalism attracts a wide range of Turks, including many members of the educated elite.

And Turkey's middle-class nationalism, as Mr. Pamuk has pointed out, is hardly exceptional. Other nations wearing some of the emblems of Western modernity - secularism, democracy, a free-market economy - hardly offer any guarantees of free speech. Consider, for example, China, India and Russia, three multiethnic and officially secular nation-states that are experimenting with variations on the free-market economy.
-----------------------
The destructive potential of modern nationalism should not surprise us. Traditional religion hardly played a role in the unprecedented violence of the 20th century, which was largely caused by secular ideologies - Nazism and Communism. Secular nationalism has been known to impose intellectual conformity and suppress dissent even in advanced democratic societies. In America, it was at least partly the fear of being perceived as unpatriotic that held back the freest news media in the world from rigorously questioning the official justification for and conduct of the war in Iraq.

As for traditional religion, outside Saudi Arabia and Iran and Afghanistan under the Taliban it has rarely enjoyed the kind of overwhelming state power that modern nationalism has known. Then why reflexively blame religion for the growth of intolerance and violence? Perhaps, because it is easy - and useful. Certainly, all the talk of Enlightenment, Reformation, a clash of civilizations and the like does help build up ideological smokescreens, obscuring the more complex political and economic battles of the world.

[Rob Mayercik]

Posting excerpts is considered Fair Use, while posting the entire article would be a copyright violation.

Rob - The Bugmenot extension works well if you are using Firefox - it automatically finds valid anonymous logins for sites that require registration.

Ed Gibbs

Interesting idea there, Ed - I'll look into that extension.

Didn't mean to jump on anyone.

Rob

Edit: Philosphically, I think my question still stands - if anyone can sign up for free, what is the point of requiring people to sign up? It must cost something to maintain the logins and passwords; wouldn't it be cheaper to get rid of it all and save the CPU cycles and HD space for something more productive?

[GomJabbar]

I think I am in a time machine going to 1984.

Big brother is getting to big for his britches.

[dsvochak]

An article in Tuesday's New York Times reports that, "Counterterrorism
agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous
surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least
indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal
cruelty and poverty relief, newly disclosed agency records show." (New
York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/polit ... r=homepage

One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

You cannot possibly make this stuff up.

[GomJabbar]

From: The New York Times, Published: December 25, 2005 The Agency That Could Be Big Brother (subscription required, but free)

DEEP in a remote, fog-layered hollow near Sugar Grove, W.Va., hidden by fortress-like mountains, sits the country's largest eavesdropping bug. Located in a "radio quiet" zone, the station's large parabolic dishes secretly and silently sweep in millions of private telephone calls and e-mail messages an hour.

Run by the ultrasecret National Security Agency, the listening post intercepts all international communications entering the eastern United States. Another N.S.A. listening post, in Yakima,Wash., eavesdrops on the western half of the country.
----------------------------
According to John E. McLaughlin, who as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the fall of 2001 was among the first briefed on the program, this eavesdropping was the most secret operation in the entire intelligence network, complete with its own code word - which itself is secret.

Jokingly referred to as "No Such Agency," the N.S.A. was created in absolute secrecy in 1952 by President Harry S. Truman. Today, it is the largest intelligence agency. It is also the most important, providing far more insight on foreign countries than the C.I.A. and other spy organizations.

But the agency is still struggling to adjust to the war on terror, in which its job is not to monitor states, but individuals or small cells hidden all over the world. To accomplish this, the N.S.A. has developed ever more sophisticated technology that mines vast amounts of data. But this technology may be of limited use abroad. And at home, it increases pressure on the agency to bypass civil liberties and skirt formal legal channels of criminal investigation. Originally created to spy on foreign adversaries, the N.S.A. was never supposed to be turned inward. Thirty years ago, Senator Frank Church, the Idaho Democrat who was then chairman of the select committee on intelligence, investigated the agency and came away stunned.

"That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people," he said in 1975, "and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide."

He added that if a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A. "could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back."
----------------------------
In 2002, it was revealed that the Pentagon had launched Total Information Awareness, a data mining program led by John Poindexter, a retired rear admiral who had served as national security adviser under Ronald Reagan and helped devise the plan to sell arms to Iran and illegally divert the proceeds to rebels in Nicaragua.

Total Information Awareness, known as T.I.A., was intended to search through vast data bases, promising to "increase the information coverage by an order-of-magnitude." According to a 2002 article in The New York Times, the program "would permit intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials to mount a vast dragnet through electronic transaction data ranging from credit card information to veterinary records, in the United States and internationally, to hunt for terrorists." After press reports, the Pentagon shut it down, and Mr. Poindexter eventually left the government.

But according to a 2004 General Accounting Office report, the Bush administration and the Pentagon continued to rely heavily on data-mining techniques. "Our survey of 128 federal departments and agencies on their use of data mining," the report said, "shows that 52 agencies are using or are planning to use data mining. These departments and agencies reported 199 data-mining efforts, of which 68 are planned and 131 are operational." Of these uses, the report continued, "the Department of Defense reported the largest number of efforts."
----------------------------
"I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge," Senator Church said. "I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."

Big Brother indeed!

[dsvochak]

veterinary records ???????

If anyone can make even a bizarre guess how veterinary records could help track down a terrorist, I'd like to hear it.

Years ago, I saw a sign in a diner that read:
"Don't sigh,
Eat Pie"

Right now, that sounds like pretty good advice.

[GomJabbar]

From The Washington Post, By Dana Priest, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, December 30, 2005
Covert CIA Program Withstands New Furor
Anti-Terror Effort Continues to Grow

"Everything is done in the name of self-defense, so they can do anything because nothing is forbidden in the war powers act," said one official who was briefed on the CIA's original cover program and who is skeptical of its legal underpinnings. "It's an amazing legal justification that allows them to do anything," said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues.

[dsvochak]

And the beat goes on. From the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/04/polit ... r=homepage :

WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 - The National Security Agency acted on its own authority, without a formal directive from President Bush, to expand its domestic surveillance operations in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to declassified documents released Tuesday.

The N.S.A. operation prompted questions from a leading Democrat, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who said in an Oct. 11, 2001, letter to a top intelligence official that she was concerned about the agency's legal authority to expand its domestic operations, the documents showed.

Ms. Pelosi's letter, which was declassified at her request, showed much earlier concerns among lawmakers about the agency's domestic surveillance operations than had been previously known.

I don't know whether we should be glad that someone in government is showing initiative, or scared that the spys are taking a DIY approach.

[dsvochak]

An AP article in Sunday's Traverse City-Record-Eagle reports that, "The
chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Sunday he has asked
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to testify publicly on the legality of
warantless eavesdropping on telephone conversations between suspected
terrorists and people in the United States" (Traverse City Record-Eagle).

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/ ... N=POLITICS

What are the chances AG Gonzales will be willing to testify publicly?

[smugiri]

as for the quote, it is not mine, only paraphrased from someone with MUCH more wit than i..
and here it is and a link to the wikipedia page..
where you can read it in the original german:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...

***
First they came for the communists,
I did not speak out
because I was not a communist.

When they came for the social democrats,
I did not speak out
because I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists
I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews
I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew;

And when they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

Another interesting fact about this is that George Orwell including a reference to it in his book "Nineteen Eighty-Four" published in the same period (1949 ) and actually built a the main plot of the book around this. He is actually the inventor of the term "Big Brother". Unfortunately, I do not have my copy at hand so I can not quote it. The German poem preceeds the book though.

[GomJabbar]

Bill Morrow actually posted the same poem and link on the first page of this thread. But you do add some interesting information about the book 1984. I knew the term 'Big Brother' came from that book, but I didn't know when the book was published or that the above poem was referenced in it.

[smugiri]

Yes, I was quoting Bill and giving some more background ... I was suggesting that the book may have come from the poem so that in quoting the poem, Bill was essentially quoting the direct root of the term "Big Brother"

[BruisedQuasar]

It is not a poem. It is a statement made by a Lutheran minister about his and his collegues failure to object in anyway to Nazi actions against first, jews they knew and then others, until finally the came for him. The author was killed by the Nazis.

I think there is no comparison between wiretaping overseas calls between verified terrorists and people here and fascism.

The Bush administration is dealing with a global terrorist movement. whose activities the press refuses to report. Islamic terrorists are murdering Thais, Phillippinos, Indonesias, Russians, Georgians, and theyhave violent active cells elsewhere in the world. Read one of the many English Language foreign papers and you will inform yourselves. Bangkok Post, English Edition (a major Pacific Rim paper), Christian Science World Monitor are a few excellent sources. In Thailand, al Qaeda connected cells are murdering women and children at bus stations and on buses.

Lincoln During the Civil War and Rooselvelt and Truman for WWII jailed US Congressman and Senators for doing less than Biden, Boxer, Murtha, & Kerry and Bellafonte do EVERY DAY. They actually did run temporary neo-authoritarian war governments, including using farm boy-soldiers as canon fodder. By WWII frontal attacks against heavy fortifications was unneccessary. Great Generals like the Germans Rommel & Model, the Polish major field general, Paton & brilliant Bristish Field Marshal Montgomery were amazed at how incompetent US generals and senior field officers were and appalled at how willing they were to canon fodder their troops in dumb frontal attacks such as D-Day, Utah Beach, etc.

The bright US Army Air Corps generals such as Dolittle and Merrill were so frustrated by the Navy and Army general refusals to let the air corps soften up the enemy before major invasions that they got Congress to let them form a separate US Air Force, after the war.

Eisenhauer never led troops in combat. He was a career desk general. The highest rank geniuses we had were Paton and Marshal. The desk generals were so jealous of them that they ganged up to keep them out of the war. Paton held down a desk most of the war and Marshal was sent off to China. The Axis generals were dumb founded by this.

Today, we have the best fighting force on the planet but politics is still the evil fence that holds them back. Rumsfiled needs to concentrate totally on getting Iraq forces ready to take over security and defense of Iraq, so they can deal with the terrorists effectively, using tactics politics forbids our forces from using. They cannot even gather information by ridiculing known terrorists. Extremests who already resolved to die are not going to give up intel without resort to psychological interrogation.

War is nasty business. ALL WAR. Civilized war is an oxymoron. The British superpower waged civilized war against American Colonials and lost to a fifth rate, under manned, under fed, untrained rag tag rebel force. Britain waged civilized action against essentially one unarmed Indian and lost big time. Americans allowed Johnson to create and run a war against communism in Vietnam, despite Johnson's running that war strictly to further his domestic personal politics. 48,000 Americans died and five times that were physically and mentally crippled for life.

Churchill said upon ordering population bombing of Germany. "The unforgiveable thing about being forced to fight an evil enemy is that you must eventually stoop one notch lower in order to defeat him.

The key to defeating the global terror movement is to do what must be done to defeat them and REMEMBERING that there were wrong things we had to do for the right reasons. Sometimes one has no choice but to accept defeat and death or do something wrong for the right reasons.

For a good man to do something wrong does not make him a bad man, no more than a good act does not make a bad man good. The key is not to rationalize or elavate the bad thing as US professors try to justify using students as their canon fodder. The key is to always remember that the bad thing you did for good reasons is still a bad thing.

We never live or can live in a pure, ideal world. Therefore, we must bend our pure thoughts sometimes or be willing to end our extinction.

Choosing extinction over getting your hands dirty is fine provided everyone agrees. No small group like the US left can reasonably expect an entire nation to accept their version of good and to accept extinction before an evil enemy, rather than temporarily dirty their hands.

The lesson of "1984", Vonnegut's "Player Piano", "Walden II "& Shultzinitzen's "Gulag is that a one peson's utopia (paradise) is a dozen other persons' worst nightmare

[dsvochak]

And Ben Franklin said "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

And Pogo said "We have met the enemy and he is us".

I, for one, am not willing to either give up liberty to obtain security, or to become the enemy in order to defeat him.

In fact, I think if we become the enemy, he wins.

[GomJabbar]

Well said dsvochak.

Some believe that the end justifies the means. I don't go along with this philosophy. "Just nuke em" some say. "That will get rid of the problem." - Not me. Life is not worth compromising important principles.

What was it Patrick Henry said? "Give me liberty or give me death."

We could end up with a society that is relatively safe from outsiders, but not safe from the insiders. Stalin's Russia was like this. Neighbors spying on neighbors and reporting to the authorities (KGB). Secretted to obscurity in Lubyanka or Siberia if you didn't go along with government policy or practiced your religious beliefs. And as the statement above by the Lutheran minister implied, the changes creep up on us.

[dsvochak]

Two more related articles.

From the AP wire http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/ ... 2-17-45-33

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The former commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, who has been tied to the prisoner abuse scandal, is declining to answer questions in two courts-martial cases involving the use of dogs during interrogations.

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller invoked the military's version of the Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate himself, a move that was defended Thursday by the military's top commander.

Comments to the effect that "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have no reason to be concerned" have been made by some individuals defending the NSA wiretapping\eavesdropping. If the comment is correct there, it's correct here.

From the Detroit News AP http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar ... 30335/1022

State motor vehicle officials who will have to carry out the Real ID Act say its authors grossly underestimated its logistical, technological and financial demands.

In a comprehensive survey obtained by the Associated Press and in follow-up interviews, officials cast doubt on the states' ability to comply with the law on time and fretted that it will be a budget buster.

Any guesses about what a driver's license renewal may cost in 2008? Or whether you'll have enough ID to get a renewal?

[GomJabbar]

Da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum.....................................................

From Times Online: Google will fight Bush Administration demand for search records

The Bush Administration has asked a federal judge to order the world’s most popular internet search engine to hand over the records of all Google searches for any one-week period, as well as other closely guarded data. The California-based company is to fight the move.

[dsvochak]

It appears that claims that the US "does not torture" may have been technically truthful.

From the AP ( http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/ ... CTION=HOME )

STRASBOURG, France (AP) -- The head of a European investigation into alleged CIA secret prisons in Europe said Tuesday that evidence pointed to the existence of a system of "outsourcing" of torture by the United States, and that it was highly likely European governments were aware of it.

Somehow, I don't think that "outsourcing of torture" is something one does to reduce labor costs.

[smugiri]

It appears that claims that the US "does not torture" may have been technically truthful.

Does that imply that "techinically truthful" is good enough?

[GomJabbar]

Does that imply that "techinically truthful" is good enough?

Sure, because: "I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!"

EDIT: Courtesy of SNL: http://filebox.vt.edu/j/janeel/stuart_for_senate.jpg

[dsvochak]

smugiri wrote:

Does that imply that "techinically truthful" is good enough?

Good enough for what? To avoid violating the McCain amendment? To be able to look at yourself in a mirror? To get a good CNN sound bite? To not, if testifying under oath, violate the 3rd Commandment?

[dsvochak]

Even though polls are showing that the vast majority don't care about this, I thought some might find this interesting.

From the AP ( http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/ ... ON=MIDWEST ):

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- A civil liberties group sued AT&T Inc. on Tuesday for its alleged role in helping the National Security Agency spy on the phone calls and other communications of U.S. citizens without warrants.

The class-action lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, seeks to stop the surveillance program that started shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks. It also seeks billions of dollars in damages.

[dsvochak]

Switching course on one of his most controversial anti-terrorism policies, President Bush agreed yesterday to submit the administration's warrantless surveillance program to a court for constitutional review.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00835.html

It's possible that someone may begin looking over the shoulder (or at least peeking over from time to time) of those who are looking over your shoulder. Perhaps the US Government has finally realized that Owell's "Big Brother" is not a how-to manual.