Category : terror

In the government’s continuing effort to show that it is more terrifying than al-Qaeda or Hamas, the FBI is planning a new push to give itself more Internet-tapping powers than it already has:

The FBI has drafted sweeping legislation that would require Internet service providers to create wiretapping hubs for police surveillance and force makers of networking gear to build in backdoors for eavesdropping, CNET News.com has learned.

FBI Agent Barry Smith distributed the proposal at a private meeting last Friday with industry representatives and indicated it would be introduced by Sen. Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.

The draft bill would place the FBI’s Net-surveillance push on solid legal footing. At the moment, it’s ensnared in a legal challenge from universities and some technology companies that claim the Federal Communications Commission’s broadband surveillance directives exceed what Congress has authorized.

The FBI claims that expanding the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act is necessary to thwart criminals and terrorists who have turned to technologies like voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.

Okay, first: Why the fuck is the FBI drafting legislation?! I didn’t know that the FBI was a legislative body, blessed with the power to write laws for our society. I always figured that the FBI was a law-enforcement agency and arm of the Justice Department! What the fuck is the FBI doing?!

I suppose that this law was actually written in a Republican-controlled think tank, farmed out to the FBI for approval, and then routed up to Congress through the office of Mike DeWine. But still, I consider the way laws are written these days to be nothing short of treasonous. Laws should be written and voted upon in the Senate or the House. The “think tank” system is full of shit. It’s a way of routing around constitutional protections and letting Big Industry, Big Media and Big Defense to write their dream legislation with the help of the think tanks who then send it up to the Congress Critters and watch them scurry around and make cosmetic changes to secure alliances and votes. What a crazy system we’ve developed. It needs to be examined, but obviously any congressional oversight will consist of looking the other way.

Anyway, I’m so pissed at how this legislation was written that I haven’t even gotten around to what they wrote yet:

The 27-page proposed CALEA amendments seen by CNET News.com would:

  • Require any manufacturer of “routing” and “addressing” hardware to offer upgrades or other “modifications” that are needed to support Internet wiretapping. Current law does require that of telephone switch manufacturers–but not makers of routers and network address translation hardware like Cisco Systems and 2Wire.
  • Authorize the expansion of wiretapping requirements to “commercial” Internet services including instant messaging if the FCC deems it to be in the “public interest.” That would likely sweep in services such as in-game chats offered by Microsoft’s Xbox 360 gaming system as well.
  • Force Internet service providers to sift through their customers’ communications to identify, for instance, only VoIP calls. (The language requires companies to adhere to “processing or filtering methods or procedures applied by a law enforcement agency.”) That means police could simply ask broadband providers like AT&T, Comcast or Verizon for wiretap info–instead of having to figure out what VoIP service was being used
  • Eliminate the current legal requirement saying the Justice Department must publish a public “notice of the actual number of communications interceptions” every year. That notice currently also must disclose the “maximum capacity” required to accommodate all of the legally authorized taps that government agencies will “conduct and use simultaneously.”

So basically, they want to tap our routers, tap our chatrooms, tap our VoIP calls and they want to not have to tell anybody about it. Great. How ’bout we just give you the keys to our house, too? Maybe we could install a camera in our bathroom for ya? Would that make it all better, FBI?

Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo-stick. They are shooting for the moon with this legislation, which would make the FBI much more powerful than it was back during the abuses of the 60s and 70s.

Hopefully this bill won’t make it out of committee, but we can’t count on that with all of the neo-fascists in the Senate. Apparently our constitutional rights don’t count for much these days. We’ll see. In the meantime, we get to contemplate a future in which the FBI has a copy of all our internet surfing (the NSA already has a copy).

Wait a minute, didn’t the FBI just get hacked by some two-bit script kiddie who brought their system to its knees?

A federal judge yesterday postponed the sentencing of a former government computer contractor who hacked the e-mail passwords of all FBI employees, including the director, several times in 2004.

The security breaches temporarily shut down an FBI classified records system containing data about witness protection and counterespionage, according to records in U.S. District Court in Washington.

Some hacker has the FBI Director’s password and you want me to trust the Director with my private conversations? …Fuck that!

Besides, I don’t see why we should give the FBI access to our internet usage when the NSA is already doing their own internet-tapping. We don’t need any more redudancy in government. We’re paying a lot in taxes to have our rights continually infringed as is, and you think we should be paying higher taxes so our rights can be violated more efficiently? …Fuck that!

And people wonder why I’m cynical about government. Are you telling me I should trust these fuckers? …Fuck that!

Honestly, I don’t worry about those cave-dwelling terrorists at all anymore. Worrying about my own government’s increasing fascism is enough.

Kinda makes you wonder who’s really behind terrorism…

Arrests in Miami concerning Sears Tower terror plot

Looks like the FBI nabbed some potential terrorists. I wonder if the Bush administation will argue that we should let them go… that way they can blow up a building and GW’s approval ratings will go sky-high again.

I never understood that part. Why did Bush’s approval ratings “explode” right after 9/11? Clearly we weren’t thinking clearly. The Bush administation was supposed to be on guard, but they failed. And don’t get me started on the gaps and distortions in the official story.

This administration has been either evil or incompetent from the get-go. It’s time for a change.

So, we catch any terrorists yet?

…Or have we only managed to infringe on the rights of 300 million Americans?

The NSA surveillance program is not about catching terrorists. Don’t ever let anybody tell you otherwise. It’s not going to work if they don’t listen to the calls themselves (they do). Their data mining is worthless unless they attach to it other information such as your social security number, medical records, financial records and criminal history.

No, the reason why they’re monitoring all of us is because the paranoid, fascist, psychopaths in charge of the country think that there are 300 million potential terrorists out there. Of course, when they say “terrorist” they mean anybody who doesn’t agree with the Bush clan. That means, Democrats, libertarians, academics, certain members of the media, teachers, those crazy Hollywood liberals, anybody who uses the internet, and of course, grandmothers. Ooohhh!! What a scary bunch!

Of course, with Bush’s polls in the lower 30s, you can add a good chunk of his Republican base to the list. As his numbers continue to spiral downwards Bush will get more and more paranoid and he will actually turn on his base and attack former friends. It should be amusing to watch.

The whole immigration debate is a good example of how Bush will be forced to choose one side of his base over the other. Corporations love illegal immigration because it provides cheap labor. Social conservatives hate illegal immigration because they don’t like brown people and they think those brown people might be stealing their jobs (and they’re probably right, since the corporations love cheap labor, like I said). So, who will Bush side with? He’s gonna piss off somebody; that’s a given. But in the end, I think Bush will side with the corporations since they are his bread and butter. The social conservatives thought he was one of them; they thought wrong. Again.

Personally, I could give a fuck as long as they don’t build a Great Wall of Terror between the US and Mexico. That would just be stupid. Yes, illegal immigration is a problem, but let’s not overreact here. What we need are more workers visas for Mexico. Most illegal immigrants actually return home after sending a bunch of cash back to Mexico. This creates economic problems in Mexico, of course. I really don’t know what the ideal solution is; I just hope GW doesn’t annex Mexico.

Wired has pried open Door 641A and taken a good long look. Here is a document from whistle-blower Mark Klein (pdf) who previously worked for AT&T as a technician. He fears the secret room was splitting the fiber optic cables carrying our internet data and sending the other half to the NSA for monitoring. He figured the project started with the Total Information Awareness program, which was supposedly defunded. Well, now the NSA is holding our electronic leash. Boy, they sure do wish to control us, don’t they? What’s with the desperation on their part? The whole government spying deal was supposed to be a conspiracy theory…. one that just about everyone believed. Well, now it’s true and it has been revealed as such and it’s staring us right in the face.

What are we gonna do about it?

What could they possibly want such an enormous information-burden for? There’s no need to spy on ALL of us! The government already knows what risk factors to look for when it comes to identifying terrorists, criminals, revolutionaries, you name it. Why would they decide to cast the net so far and wide unless their goal was to criminalize all of us?

Do you know the best way to get a person to act like a criminal?

Treat them like one.

… That’s my suspicion anyway. You know, a firefighter only has a job when fires are burning. In the same way, a cop only has a job if there’s crime and a warrior only has a job if there’s a war on. Are you pickin’ up what I’m layin’ down?

It wouldn’t be the first time; politicians are known to create problems so they have something to solve… after the election… assuming they are elected. And if they aren’t, why solve it? Why not create problems for your opponent? Then he does the same thing for you. Pretty soon, while you’re squabbling like dogs, the public is drowning in a sea of problems that you were supposed to solve, not create!

That’s how we get the super-bad problems like the War on Drugs problem. The problem of the fact that demagogues and idiots made a war on drug-users, is far worse than the problem of simple drug use and abuse. The War on Terror is similar in that it will never end, it is not intended to end, and even though war has been declared on an object (drugs) or tactic (terrorism), the things that suffer most in the war are people — mostly innocent bystanders in a war between shadowy groups who both fight and support each other. The collateral damage is mostly the result of people getting caught in the middle of those two groups (the government and the criminals) and paying the ultimate price in a war that did not need to be fought.

We are ruled by a political class that rule us as if they were kings, walking amongst the mere mortal peasants. They are sheltered from the world’s injustices and deprivations. They are inducted into a society of the well-to-do because there is no other social class for which they are fit. They have never really grown up, and so we peasants must suffer through the elite’s tiresome games, such as the war on drugs and the supposed war on terror, which seem to be much more of a war on the people. Another thing both of these demagogic wars have in common is that they are designed to erode our freedoms and our privacy by justifying it with the old saw, “need the tools to catch the bad guys.” Cops and Robbers for adults. Innocents are arrested so that the cops can have their fun. Meanwhile the criminals get away with it. The justice system spits them back out on the streets. After all, we’d have to lay off cops if there was no crime. The cycle goes on endlessly. Meanwhile, the rest of us are caught in the middle of this evil maelstrom, rocked about on waves of uncertainty and strife.

They’re building a system of control, people! Wake up before it’s too late!! They want to include all of us in their little game! Run and hide if you want, but they can still catch you; they have the technology. Fiber optic splitters to steal our communications, and televisions to assure us that it’s alright, no need to worry….

[szghk]

bszzzzzzshshh! |/<>\| [crackle]

[wavy lines]…. you are feeling…. sleepy. Content. Open. Let us in…..

Things are fine. We’re here to protect you… from the terrorists. The terrorists hate your freedom. They’re coming for you; only we can protect you from an enemy that exists all around you. Any one of your neighbors could be a spy or a terrorist or a commie, or even Irish. Be sure to turn them in at your local FBI office.

We’re listening anyway, so you might as well.

Coming up next, a pitbull dances with a lobster and a hyena! Wait ’til you see this!. ., After these messages.–