Coming to America - The Chinese Internet model
The New York Times has it right. This concept of governmental monitoring of the nodes of the Internet was raised some years ago, and abandoned after cries of outrage rendered it political dynamite. But I am certain it has resurfaced, has been implemented without our knowledge, and I consider it possible that the government has given itself the means to completely control the domestic portion of internet traffic.
The lead balloon was known as Carnivore. This article seems almost quaint in describing the presumed legal basis for such monitoring. The FBI planned to use Carnivore for specific reasons. "Particularly, the agency would request a court order to use Carnivore" to gather intelligence on certain crimes. Well, folks, this is 2006. And King George, he don't need no stinkin' warrants. The AT&T suit is only the tip of the iceberg on this thing. They went ahead and did it. Those black boxes now see everything from emails to instant messages sent by millions of Americans.
The utility of the information that is being illegally gathered is not going to be in any court prosecutions. Without warrants, anything learned could not be admitted in a court of law. The ass-covering claim will be made that the President deemed it necessary to prevent terrorist attacks, and though they won't say it quite like this, that his magical unitary powers give him the right to suspend the 4th Amendment en masse and unannounced. This is ridiculous. Even given keyword-based search algorithms to filter and mine the data, the amount of information gathered is mind-boggling, and the false hits will always astronomically outweigh any real leads. For prevention of modern terrorism, based on informal and highly suspicious groups of cautious people, the wholescale vacuuming of data is going to be useless.
Defeat of terrorism will be best accomplished by conventional human intelligence methods. And, I would argue, by America acting like the America I remember, and not like the impending embodiment of neoconservative global military domination fantasies. Real warriors for Christ, these guys.
Those monitoring units would now likely be under the control of the NSA. They can almost certainly be updated remotely, and depending on the actual placement, could also include active filtering and censorship capability. If so, then all that is lacking now for near totalitarian government control of the U.S. portion of Internet is the will to do so. I only hope for our sake that it's not ready and waiting when the President begins his pre-election bombing of Iran. You may be prevented from seeing this blog after that.
You can't control what you don't know is going on. And yes, government monitoring of private domestic communications, without a warrant, IS an unconstitutional restraint on our freedom of speech. I am of course urging people to vote Democratic this November, as I truly believe we are in the midst of a full-blown constitutional crisis right now. If the Rubberstamp Republicans maintain their majorities in both houses of Congress, centuries of theories on the constitution and human rights will fall to the fictional construct of a unitary president. There will be no further checks on him for the next 2 years. We the people must check the imperious behavior of George W. Bush.
One final thought. Think, Alternets. Point to point and private wireless mesh networks. New lines of communication to reroute around government interference with free speech. Widespread use of strong encryption will slow those NSA processors down (see now why they wanted to ban encrytion?). With such an impetus to distrust government, and the means to do something about it, we may spark yet another phase in our information (r)evolution. Perhaps we should update Marshall McLuhan ("The Medium is the Message") and now proclaim that the message makes the medium irrelevant.
The lead balloon was known as Carnivore. This article seems almost quaint in describing the presumed legal basis for such monitoring. The FBI planned to use Carnivore for specific reasons. "Particularly, the agency would request a court order to use Carnivore" to gather intelligence on certain crimes. Well, folks, this is 2006. And King George, he don't need no stinkin' warrants. The AT&T suit is only the tip of the iceberg on this thing. They went ahead and did it. Those black boxes now see everything from emails to instant messages sent by millions of Americans.
The utility of the information that is being illegally gathered is not going to be in any court prosecutions. Without warrants, anything learned could not be admitted in a court of law. The ass-covering claim will be made that the President deemed it necessary to prevent terrorist attacks, and though they won't say it quite like this, that his magical unitary powers give him the right to suspend the 4th Amendment en masse and unannounced. This is ridiculous. Even given keyword-based search algorithms to filter and mine the data, the amount of information gathered is mind-boggling, and the false hits will always astronomically outweigh any real leads. For prevention of modern terrorism, based on informal and highly suspicious groups of cautious people, the wholescale vacuuming of data is going to be useless.
Defeat of terrorism will be best accomplished by conventional human intelligence methods. And, I would argue, by America acting like the America I remember, and not like the impending embodiment of neoconservative global military domination fantasies. Real warriors for Christ, these guys.
Those monitoring units would now likely be under the control of the NSA. They can almost certainly be updated remotely, and depending on the actual placement, could also include active filtering and censorship capability. If so, then all that is lacking now for near totalitarian government control of the U.S. portion of Internet is the will to do so. I only hope for our sake that it's not ready and waiting when the President begins his pre-election bombing of Iran. You may be prevented from seeing this blog after that.
You can't control what you don't know is going on. And yes, government monitoring of private domestic communications, without a warrant, IS an unconstitutional restraint on our freedom of speech. I am of course urging people to vote Democratic this November, as I truly believe we are in the midst of a full-blown constitutional crisis right now. If the Rubberstamp Republicans maintain their majorities in both houses of Congress, centuries of theories on the constitution and human rights will fall to the fictional construct of a unitary president. There will be no further checks on him for the next 2 years. We the people must check the imperious behavior of George W. Bush.
One final thought. Think, Alternets. Point to point and private wireless mesh networks. New lines of communication to reroute around government interference with free speech. Widespread use of strong encryption will slow those NSA processors down (see now why they wanted to ban encrytion?). With such an impetus to distrust government, and the means to do something about it, we may spark yet another phase in our information (r)evolution. Perhaps we should update Marshall McLuhan ("The Medium is the Message") and now proclaim that the message makes the medium irrelevant.
posted by Scoop | 10:18 PM
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