FBI pushes for more power to crush your privacy

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This should be required reading for every American voter. … and recommended for everyone else. InfoWorld Tech Watch, by Caroline Craig
[See the full post at: FBI pushes for more power to crush your privacy]

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Is late East Germany’s (DDR) Stasi today’s FBI, CIA, NSA and affiliated perspective? And should it be, will it prevail? This would not be the America I’ve known and love, but I remain confident that the nation, its people and its constitutional rights will maintain that America enlightening the world rather than scanning it. I am not a U.S. citizen so my comment is that of an observer, only.

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I am a US citizen, but lived outside the US for many years. One of the main reasons is American politics, which I’ve detested for decades. This year’s presidential race is… let me put it this way… I wish Pat Paulsen was still around.

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Sadly, you are not safe from similar crap even outside the US. See TTIP. 🙁

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I remember Pat Paulsen – he first ran for President in 1968. Paulsen was a regular on the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” show.

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The country we grew up in Woody no longer exists. Generations of crooked lawyers growing up to be politicians have ruined it. It’s now “The land of the offended and the home of the surveilled”.

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Pretty scary when you realize that most of Washington apparently wants this unchecked spying and monitoring.

The Dems complained about it till they got in power; now everyone is for it.

It seems like everything you do these days is monitored; if not by the government, then by someone else. And all in the name of either security or convenience.

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I think our elected representatives should make this issue top priority and get it settled so that there are no gray areas, and the constitutionality is agreed upon by a majority.

Also, as with credit reports and credit bureaus, I think all US citizens are entitled to know what data is stored on them in any govt database.

To be able to challenge and correct any possible incorrect information should be a citizen’s right.

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Best presidential candidate this country’s ever seen! (At least, in my time.)

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Yep. I lived in Thailand for 13 years, where internet snooping is kinda taken for granted.

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Like the 5 Wall St megabanks the infrastructure for the post Eisenhower updated “military/industrial/intelligence/Big Hacking/police/corporate/bureaucrat/”electoral” govt complex” will be too “BIG” – not just to “fail” but to be dismantled EVEN IF the less opaque publicly elected “visible government” legislated it thoroughly enough. Which won’t happen. The net and devices are ever too easily gamed by NSA, black budgets, corporates, Big Hacking, FBI etc. At least the FBI has the “official decency” to occasionally ask Corporations – if not the courts til forced – if they can sneak a peek before they actually molest you.

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And MS forcing unfilterable, too often opaque updates down Win 10 users throats is yet another small victory for opaquely pipelining what this still developing aggregate of post Eisenhower complex of power wishes through an OS, not just an application, that services still more devices and the net than Apple and other platforms also under attack. Tech Platform businesses revenue streams and business plans are being forced, induced, seduced, pressured etc to conform what this still evolving complex wants. Makes me wonder if Linux and other open source code platforms aren’t surreptitiously getting co-opted now or are planned for in the near future also. I don’t believe that to be paranoid – but perhaps obvious to those with more expertise than I if one might take an informed hard eyed look at it. Meanwhile I’m struggling to determine what a “dll journal” is and why update it with kb3138378. Do I just ride out Win 7 til I go linux Ubuntu or Mint? I’m lost….

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I have an idea… Let’s think “root cause” rather than becoming alarmed over the headline…

If people would hold morality and adherence to the law in the highest regard, we wouldn’t need the FBI or attacks on privacy in the first place.

As it is, where “anything goes as long as you’re not caught”, people (with exceptions of course) simply aren’t behaving well enough to deserve privacy.

What if we were to teach people a whole lot better about right and wrong in the first place? Then the best we can hope for is that maybe it’ll improve the future.

Where is it written our kids have to be worse than we are?

-Noel

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You’re not alone, which can be a comfort and a terrifying thought but this is happening all around the world. Over here in the UK we have the Investigatory Powers Bill* to contend with which looks to be getting rushed through parliament any day now and it is deeply deeply flawed. They’re rushing it through now in the hope that the mess that is the EU referendum will act as a smokescreen. Dark days, my friends.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_Investigatory_Powers_Bill

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1984 was published a few years after I was born. I first read the book while still young and I worried then to see the beginnings of Orwell’s prophecy taking hold. In my lifetime I’ve seen most of what was predicted become reality. I am surprised and saddened now that so few have even heard of the book. Many are not aware of what’s happened or, if aware, they really don’t care. I guess we really do get the government we deserve.

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You know, be it with individuals or geopolitics whether you’re good or bad, strong or weak you’ll always be criticized and/or attacked, only the reasons will change.

I think the term “Big Ears” is more appropriate than “Big Brother” because indeed (referring to comments above) all countries listen to their citizens nowadays, even more in this digital era. Listening to other countries’ citizens, business, industry and politicians as well.

What makes the specificity of the USA is its power together with its constitutional claim and quest for liberty. From there on simple logic needs not imagination to check that problems are tied to this eternal opposition, power and liberty, security and freedom.

The quest for a medium point, a point of balance is what all nations claiming democracy are facing. And defining this balance is a major challenge. But democracy is before all a representation of the nation, of the people, and I believe a country must be conducted by those representatives and not by occult groups, be they those of intelligence.

May democracy prevail. And from what I read in Caroline Craig’s article on InfoWorld, it seems democracy is seriously knocked, to put it mildly. The question is “Who has the authority?”

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I have a problem with a conflict in viewpoints.

I see a negative reaction to the unregulated snooping and collection of data (undocumented access and content) by the FBI, NSA, etc. People have been up in arms about it, particularly since the Snowden revelations, citing Constitutional privacy violations and asking for regulating laws to be passed to limit it.

On the other hand, Win10/Microsoft/Cortana/BING’s snooping and unregulated collection of data (undocumented access and content are the default settings that Joe Public does not normally change) is blown off as “modern way of life.” It’s like “Get Windows 10 and snooping is OK” And Microsoft is not the only “collector.” It is accepted as “the way it is.”

Am I missing something here?

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Not at all. And it isn’t just Cortana. Siri, OK Google, and Alexa all listen, all the time. ChromeOS collects all sorts of info about you. And on and on. Watch out for your car, refrigerator, and thermostat.

It’s a sign of the times. Folks not willing to participate need to understand their choices, and vote accordingly.

I really think this will become one of the big political questions of the coming decade.

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When will askwoody.com be available through HTTPS?

woody, why are you sharing them with all of your reader’s data?

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It’s on the list of things to do when WordPress gets it rolled out.

Sharing data? Ummmm…. I don’t think so. https will make individual connections more snoop-proof. Email addresses are optional, in general, and there are no passwords on the site. Don’t know of any way to get into the addresses that are on the site, anyway – but admittedly WordPress sites have been hacked many times.

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I recommend changing
“Mail (will not be published)”
to
“Mail (Optional, will not be published)”

I guess he meant using things like gravatar.com

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Should read E. Gordon Liddy. FBI has been snooping just to get the intelligence for years, forget about the info be able to be used in court. You seriously telling me they can’t crack into stuff?

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Gee I asked Woody that Question in February. I’m not sure he gets it… (thread below)
——————————————–

Hi Woody,

I don’t use WordPress, but a quick search turns up plenty of articles, doesn’t look any more difficult than any other site and if your site is hosted it should be easier still. I understand you don’t do ecommerce, but as your site grows it becomes a more valuable target for MitM attacks, to plant virus’s or discredit you if someone had a bone to pick. And then there’s this…

Recently, Google also announced that they will be using HTTPS and SSL as a ranking signal in their search results. This means that using HTTPS and SSL will help improve your site’s SEO.

Anyway, been enjoying your stuff for years…

Thanks,

From: woodyleonhard@
[mailto:woodyleonhard@] On Behalf Of Woody Leonhard
Sent: Saturday, February 06, 2016 6:03 AM
To: I. T.
Subject: Re: As a regular reader of Askwoody.com I have to ask…

Interesting. I hadn’t thought about it.

Adding HTTPS support to a WordPress site is a major undertaking. I could hire a team to do it, but (given the nature of the site) not sure that it’d be worth the expense…

— Woody

On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 3:05 PM, I. T. wrote:

Woody,

I would think most of your readers are technically savvy as am I, concerned about security, Microsoft spyware etc.. As the man who has his finger on the pulse of “What’s Happening” I have to ask… Why doesn’t askwoody.com support secure connections? I’m seeing a hole in this logic.

You have a wonderful soapbox to shout from, might not be a bad idea to write an article, perhaps mention plugins like HTTPS Everywhere, Privacy Badger or Disconnect.me

Thanks,

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I get it. I’m under a lot of pressure to do a lot of things. I’m sorry to say that implementing https on AskWoody.com isn’t one of my high priorities. Although I understand why https would be a benefit to the site, I don’t see it as overwhelmingly important, simply because of the nature of the site.

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Here’s a theoretical for you Woody…

Let’s say a hacker uses DNS Cache poisoning and routes your users to a Fake Askwoody.com website that serves up drive-by malware. You could lose all credibility. Especially bad after being warned multiple times and turning a deaf ear. It’s not that hard, doesn’t cost much or take long to implement. Certainly Woody with your connections you must know someone who can do it for ya 😉

With respect…

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Sadly this is mostly true. However, there are at least a few better countries that have most of their crap together & don’t spy on their citizens, invade their privacy or abuse their rights nearly even close to as much as us.

Frankly, I’d be moving somewhere else if I wasn’t disabled & reliant upon family members. It’s becoming a volatile place to live for everyone. Still, the privacy issue is rampant all over the globe. Mostly it’s companies trying to make money off of us without paying us a dime. It’s really important that everyone fight back against this crap before it becomes worse & the accepted norm.
Between hardware you can’t trust, viruses, companies stealing your information & government organizations, you can no longer enjoy your electronics & live with any hope or sense of one of the most important human rights; Privacy.

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I have the same problem & agree completely with everything you said. It’s upsetting to be forced into this garbage. I no doubt will be forced to switch to Linux once support ends, and where does that leave me? Without access to most software I need/want to use. I’ve been using Windows since I was 5 years old, and honestly, I don’t have the energy to learn an entire new operating system. I also loved a lot of things about Windows. Obviously not anymore, but still.

The good thing about Linux is while you’re right, there are ways the government could release their own distributions of Linux and be evil about it, most distributions have their code publicly available & pretty much peer reviewed. Companies like Microsoft don’t have to do anything of the sort. Because of this, Linux is often safer & less abused. That’s not to say it couldn’t be, of course, but it would be fairly difficult to get away with unless they release a distribution that is super rare or closed source. In the first case, it would be silly because it would require too much for too little, and the second case would also mean less likely would people even use it.

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There are so many things wrong with this statement that I can’t even begin to tell you.
That exact idea is the problem. Saying this stuff is acceptable because of some lousy people is beyond not ok.

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Yeah, unfortunately the “big brother” of the UK is much worse in many ways than the US could be. I do not envy you that.

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Both of these things are unacceptable. The problem is most people are too stupid to care, or don’t pay attention, or worse, they think their privacy isn’t important because they have nothing to hide. That’s beside the point. It is still unacceptable & the #1 reason I will never use Windows 10.

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What people often forget about government surveillance is the history of how it has evolved.

Back in the “Golden Age” when America was a nation of relatively stable neighborhoods and small towns, we didn’t have anywhere near as much public spying.

This was largely because in samll towns or close-knit neighborhoods, everyone knew everybody else’s business, down to the most intimate details. Hence, no need for government to spy on citizens. It would be redundant.

But as we became a more mobile nation with less face to face interaction, neighbors generally stopped knowing one another this well. It gradually became more important (in one view) for someone in government to collect and curate the details once known by everyone about our neighbors.

It’s either that, or trust the private information companies. I have personally ranted at AskWoody about how inaccurate and unfair those companies are in their use of the personal data they collect and retain.

I don’t know what the best compromise will be for our safety and our privacy, but I am sure of one thing. Whether by words or by deeds, our Constitution and its Amendments are being updated for the 21st Century right before our eyes.

Sure, the tone and conduct of the public debate this year in the USA is goshawful, but the issues are not going to go away. We must have a framework of Liberty and Security in place for the Digital Age. How we do this is up to us and those we elect.

Good luck and godspeed to one and all in this challenging endeavor!

Keep fighting the Good Fight, Woody! You are not fighting alone.

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