Enemy Of Tthe State -- Deconstructing Public Enemy Or You Spy, We Spy?greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread |
Enemy Of Tthe State -- Deconstructing Public Enemy Or You Spy, We Spy?To continue with the theme of the "Big Brother..." thread. -- Diane
Wired News http://www.wired.com
http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/16507.html 26.Nov.98.PST Eye Spy
Deconstructing Public Enemy 3:00 a.m. They're watching from above, eyeing your bank account, and listening to your conversations. Here's the truth behind the paranoia in Enemy of the State. By Judy DeMocker, jdemock@hotmail.com
3:00 a.m. 26.Nov.98.PST The scariest implication in conspiracy thriller Enemy of the State is that technology isn't what's holding the US government back from spying on its citizens. Laws are.
Pretty much every whiz-bang spying technology depicted in the movie [http://www.movies.com/eos/], which opened in US theaters on 20 November, is possible today -- sophisticated satellite surveillance systems, accessibility of bank records, phone taps without warrants. And the movie's premise that national security can take precedence over the civil rights of law-abiding citizens, has hit a chord with viewers and filmmakers alike.
"I want the audience when they leave the theater to be looking over their shoulders thinking, can this really happen? And I want them to believe that it can happen," said director Tony Scott in a prerecorded interview. [http://www.movies.com/eos/site/index.html]
The scenario of an innocent man being digitally hounded through tunnel and building, traced to pay phones and 7-Eleven surveillance systems, and exposed by a digital trail of personal information, is overblown. Most store cameras are not hooked up to outside systems, and databases are not so rapidly accessible that a government agent could pull up a suspect's past addresses, personal history, bank, and telephone records in the blink of an eye.
[Maybe just two blinks]
"Overall, I think the movie overestimates how well databases are linked together, and the possibility of real-time record retrieval," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director at the Electronic Privacy Information Center [http://www.epic.org/]. "But someday, it will be possible to conduct that type of constant surveillance of a target."
The law protects citizens from being spied on in their homes. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution establishes search and seizure limits. But as the world increasingly uses telecommunications and Internet technologies, the digital line between public and private has blurred.
"The Fourth Amendment [http://caselaw.findlaw.com/data/Constitution/amendment04/] says we have a right to be free in our homes and our papers, but in terms of informational privacy, there's not explicit constitutional protection," said Cassidy Seghal, staff counsel on information issues for the American Civil Liberties Union [http://www.aclu.org/]. "Digital telephony creates the possibility for increased portals, so government can acquire the data much faster. Certainly real-time transmissions and interceptions are possible."
[So what! I hope they are bored! They have no idea whose watching them.]
Legal protection from surveillance is guaranteed under Title 3 laws, passed in 1968. But those laws haven't kept up with technological advances. For instance, government agencies can track people using low-level transmitters via satellite, as seen in the movie, and there are no laws governing it.
And the laws around wiretapping have been weakened of late. "The laws are awful right now," said Lisa Dean, vice president for technology policy at the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation [http://www.freecongress.org/], in Washington. "Congress just passed a roving wiretap proposition that allows them to tap anyone in the vicinity of the person they've targeted."
With telephone companies converting their systems from analog to digital, wiretapping has gotten faster and easier. Law enforcement agents no longer need to physically tap phone lines, and if they bypass the warrant process in the interests of national security, they can be listening in minutes, said the ACLU's Seghal.
[Yep. Just go to the CIAs public access web-site http://www.odci.gov/cia/employment/ciaeindex.htm and see how long it takes them send back a beep-beep-beep trace on your phone number. Hint: took em under four minutes! They also messed with my puter too, while loading a plug-in. Phoned the CIA in Virginia to complain!]
The know-it-all, ex-National Security Agency man in the movie, Brill, made a number of assertions that cross the line between reality and conspiracy theory.
"There are 14 acres of mainframes under Fort Meade [http://www.mdw.army.mil/meade.htm] automatically taping and analyzing telephone conversations," said Brill, played by Gene Hackman.
"The NSA [http://www.nsa.gov:8080/] may have acres of computers, but they're crunching numbers, not taping phone calls. The movie's marrying two facts together to make a false conclusion," said James Bamford, author of The Puzzle Palace, the authoritative history and profile of the National Security Agency.
It's unlikely the NSA is taping phone calls within the country, Bamford said. The agency used to do some illegal taping in the '70s, but they've cleaned up their act since then, he said.
"Technically, the government does have the capability to record and analyze the large percentage of the world's telecommunications. That's the NSA's main function," said James Dempsey, senior staff counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology [http://www.cdt.org/], in Washington.
Within the United States, however, it is illegal for the government to do blanket recording of domestic conversations, and so they focus most of their eavesdropping efforts overseas, Dempsey said.
Fort Meade is the hub of the Echelon satellite surveillance system, and its goal is to intercept fax, email, and voice communications, said Dean, of the Free Congress Foundation. "It probably is illegal, but they can do it," she said.
"The NSA can read the time off your watch," Brill claimed in the film.
The National Reconnaissance Office, which maintains the satellite network for the NSA, declined to comment on the resolution capabilities of its satellite surveillance. And spokesman Art Haubold pointed out that, legally, his organization is not allowed to turn its surveillance systems on the United States.
But it's likely that military's current satellite surveillance can track people and cars from place to place, as shown in the film, and even to give a digital download that would run like a 10-frame-per-second video, according to Tom Herring, a geophysics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The satellites he uses for research can resolve images up to 1 meter, based on technology that's 10 to 15 years old.
"My best guess is that the military could do a factor of 10 better than that," Herring said. "With an imaging capability of 10 cm, detecting a person would be possible, and it's plausible that you could see facial characteristics." Probably not a watch face, though.
And, in case you were wondering, there are no spy satellites attached to the Hubble Space telescope.
[See also earlier thread on CIA & Hiring Practices -- Diane]
-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), November 27, 1998
Also...Wired News http://www.wired.com
http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/15864.html Spying on the Spies by Niall McKay, niall@wired.com
12:55 p.m. 27.Oct.98.PST A Washington DC civil liberties organization will send a detailed report on the National Security Agency's [http://www.nsa.gov:8080/] top-secret spying network to members of Congress later this week.
The report, Echelon: America's Spy in the Sky [http:// www.freecongress.org/ctp/echelon.html], details the known history and workings of the agency's global electronic surveillance system. The system is reportedly able to intercept, record, and translate any electronic communication -- such as telephone, data, cellular, fax, email, telex -- sent throughout the world.
"There is a real and present threat to the security of the US from its enemies," said Patrick Poole, author of the report and deputy director of the Free Congress Foundation [http://www.freecongress.org/]. "But there needs to be some democratic and constitutional oversight of how and against who the [Echelon] system is being used."
The Free Congress Foundation is hoping that Congress will scrutinize Echelon as carefully as the European Parliament [http:// www.europarl.eu.int/dg3/sdp/pointses/en/p980914s.htm#6] has. The parliament commissioned several reports on Echelon earlier this year and the issue has been hotly debated ever since.
The NSA neither confirms nor denies Echelon's existence, but investigative journalists and civil liberties activists have turned up a number of details in recent years.
Glyn Ford, a British member of the European Parliament, said he sees the necessity of Echelon but, like Poole, he worries about the NSA's apparent lack of accountability.
"If we are going to leave the electronic key under the doormat, then we want an assurance that the people who pick up that key are not going to steal the family silver," said Ford.
-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), November 27, 1998.
Exposing the Global Surveillance System
-- Dunno (anon@priv.org), November 27, 1998.
Also...http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/15509.html FBI's Wish is Granted By Niall McKay, niall@wired.com
4:00 a.m. 9.Oct.98.PDT US lawmakers inserted a provision expanding the FBI's [http:// www.fbi.gov/] capacity to eavesdrop on American citizens into an intelligence budget bill, provoking sharp criticism from civil libertarians and a conservative member of congress.
The so-called roving wiretap provision, an item on the FBI's controversial wish list [http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/ story/15350.html], was added to the Intelligence Authorization Act, (HR3694) [http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c105:5:./temp/ ~c105lrIZqO:e0:] late Wednesday, said Representative Bob Barr (R- Georgia).
"Under this new law, the federal government will have the ability to eavesdrop on each and every one of us," said Barr [http:// www.house.gov/barr/p_doj.html], a former federal prosecutor and ex-CIA analyst who is running for a third term.
The provision, which allows law enforcement agencies to tap telephones used by or near targeted individuals rather than requiring authorization to tap specific phones, was rejected by Congress as part of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism bill.
It was introduced by a joint committee charged with reconciling the House and Senate versions of the intelligence budget.
"This is a sneaky attack on the privacy rights of Americans," Greg Nojeim, ACLU [phttp://www.aclu.org/] Legislative Counsel.
Patrick Poole, deputy director of the Free Congress Foundation [http:/ /www.freecongress.org/], called it a case of bill stuffing. Every year in the last few days of congress the FBI tries to sneak previously rejected legislation into must-pass legislation, including budgets, Poole said.
"There is a flaw in the process that law makers take advantage of to pass controversial laws that do not stand up to open debate," said Poole. "This is how they managed to make the National Identity Cards Law."
Related Links:
U.S Department of Justice -- http://www.usdoj.gov/ Society of Former Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- http://www.socxfbi.org/
Note the comment "This is how they managed to make the National Identity Cards Law."
Anyone have a lead on that? Thought it was still under debate. -- Diane
-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), November 27, 1998.
It's part of the 'Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act' of 1996.Your Papers Please
-- Dunno (anon@priv.org), November 27, 1998.
Diane: Dunno is right. Here is another reference (from 3rd quarter 1997):World of Money
-- Rob Michaels (sonofdust@net.com), November 27, 1998.
Dunno, Thanks.Your Papers Please... "In 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act... One section of that law requires all states to make their driver's licenses comply with strict guidelines of the act. As of Oct. 1, 2000 -- a month before the next presidential election -- the federal government mandates that Social Security numbers be included as the license number. Eventually, the act also requires the cards to include digitized biometric information such as fingerprints, retina scans and DNA prints."
The article's end statement:
"More to the point: Tell them to take their national identity card and stick it where the sun don't shine."
Beginning to look like Y2K can't come soon enough. *Sigh* Hey, Washington, you keep this stuff up and you just might make an activist out of me yet! (You really don't want that, trust me, I come with a loaded automatic slingshot).
Diane
-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), November 27, 1998.
"I come with a loaded automatic slingshot). "Diane: Just a word of advice... Don't tell them about the spiked fruitcake!
-- Rob Michaels (sonofdust@net.com), November 27, 1998.
Yep. Rob we gotta keep that secret. Not to worry, clearly they can't read. Sheesh.
-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), November 27, 1998.
Dey aint illiterate, dey jes caint respond to sumpin deys red, if it's in the king's english, that is. these are, after all high school graduates. Write it in ebonics and they can get it everytime.or maybe Esperanto, always assuming we're talking about the liberal croud
-- nope (naa@this.time), November 27, 1998.