http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/ZDM/big_brother_commentary_pcmag_040218.html
Now this is scary. They can take any info they find on servers they confiscate and do what ever they wish with it.
It makes on afraid to go anywhere on the net.
[ot]
I was this close to signing up, too.
[/ot]
So what?
So they know you masterbate 3 times a day, big whoopdy doo.
/off to get my tinfoil hat
Reeder’s OP is very interesting, and in my day I would have been just as worried and outraged.
A while back, however, I started to wonder if worrying about FBI surveillance of me was that big of a thing. So long as it’s legally done under a court order, well, for worse or even worse, it’s part of the System. And if it’s done illegally…well, I imagine the FBI could manufacture all sorts of “evidence” against me if they wanted to, without having to have the manpower or effort to raid an ISP. I mean, they could easily just fake IP logs, plant child p0rn in my house, pull me over and toss a joint in the front seat and say “lookee what we have here…”
So I do worry about it from a larger standpoint of invasion of privacy. This stuff also isn’t very new, as 2600 fans can attest to. See also what Bruce Sterling wrote about re: Steve Jackson Games in “The Hacker Crackdown” (public domain text, available nearly anywhere).
And we know this happened under the Patriot Act because…?
What scares me is relying on the technical expertise of these people to distinguish between a person just visiting the chat room and a person doing something genuinely illegal.
Let’s just hope that fear becomes a reality.
Well, no, you have a point, Reeder. I mean, before computers, there was absolutely NO way of record keeping! I mean, it was utterly impossible for the FBI to figure out who had done what, after the fact! Hell, without computers, there’d be no way to, y’know, write down a name, y’know, in a book, maybe.
Damn technology. It’s all a curse. And damn the Feds, because once they have someone’s name and/or IP address in their hands, they just HAVE to violate that person’s right. Because every Fed is compelled, through divine manipulation, to violate YOUR RIGHTS. They MUST.
What they did to SJG was just flat out wrong. I’ve got a co-worker I was talking to about this sort of thing once upon a time, expanded wiretapping/carnivore type stuff, and he said “What are you worried about, if you’ve got nothing to hide then you don’t need to worry.” I swear I was torn between pity and wanting to go upside his head with a clue-by-four.
Enjoy,
Steven
Who the hell mentioned the Patriot Act? You cheerleader you.
Philo:Too late, join or not your info is already on the server. While I OTOH joined from a public portal with a yahoo e-mail account… 
Once you’ve been around longer, you’ll realize that comment was directed at Reeder
I’m sure a decent lawyer will do the 'stinguishin.
Well, yes, but he never mentioned the Patriot Act either. 
So, just because they have the server, you think they’re gonna start files on everybody who innocently visited the site? Store all that useless chat for future use in the off chance that maybe one of them innocents will throw a tomato at GWB?
Or is it just that that it’ll help build the FBI’s REEDER file?
“If you don’t have anything to hide, what’s your problem?”
I will tell you what my problem is. Better yet, I will demonstrate.
Let us assume that I have a grievance with you. Let us assume that I have convinced a judge that you are manufacturing crack cocaine in your bathroom, running a child porn operation off your computer, and growing the devil weed in your hall closet, okay? Note that some judges are easier to convince of this sort of thing than others. Hell, a Carlsbad family recently had their house searched because someone noticed their electric bills seemed a bit high… and in Louisiana, cops don’t seem to NEED a search warrant any more, if they feel “unsafe.”
We will arrange for the cops to show up, in force, guns drawn, at your house at eleven o’clock at night. It’s best to do this very late or very early, so’s to put the suspects at ease, right?
When you open the door, your ass becomes police property. You WILL put it EXACTLY where the cops tell you to put it, or it will spend the evening locked up in a police car while the nice officers turn your house upside down. Your family, your children, your pets… well… they’ll just have to do what the officers tell them. If you’re lucky, all the officers involved in the situation will be solid, professional, empathetic fellows, and none of them will be feeling like abusing his law enforcement powers that evening.
Assuming you cooperate completely with the officers, they will likely park you on your couch or in your easy chair (after first searching it for weapons) and a couple of officers will be assigned to watch you while the rest tear your house apart.
You’re lucky, though. Since your hall closet contains no grow-lites or marijuana, and your bathroom is plainly not a drug lab, they’ll likely just poke around a little, laugh at any sex toys they find in your bedside drawers, nose around for anything suspicious, and then disconnect your computer and any peripherals that might contain data (including your printer – it has a memory) and walk out the door with all this stuff. Your ordeal will last no longer than a couple hours.
You’ll get it back whenever they have time to check it over completely and make sure there’s nothing illegal on it. You will, of course, be expected to provide any passwords they’ll need to get past any encryptions you might have. If not, they’ll have to hack it, and that’ll take quite some time. Hope you didn’t need that computer anytime soon, chum.
Oh, yeah. They’ll also take you outside, away from your family, and interrogate you about your drug lab and missing dope plants. What did you do with them? We know you have them. Who tipped you off that we were coming? Come clean NOW, bud, and maybe we can go easy on you. No, no, forget the lies, buddy. Start talking, before my partner here loses his patience and decides you need to spend the night downtown…
One by one, they will subject everyone in the house to this treatment. They’re suspicious, you know. That’s what cops do. We PAY them to be suspicious, and SOMEONE sure seemed to think there was something major league illegal going on here!
…but there isn’t. You’re quite innocent, and if you behave yourself, don’t lose patience with the nice officers (no matter how they treat you) and act like a good citizen, the worst that will happen is a night’s lost sleep (not to mention any productivity you might have had in mind the following day), some small amount of humiliation for you, your spouse, and your children, the loss of your computer for a few weeks, and the complete destruction of any idea you might have had that your home was yours, or that it was any way safe.
But that’s okay. You’re a good citizen, you have nothing to hide, and certainly no cop would decide to make your evening any rougher than it had to be, for any reason at all.
Right?
I don’t think that’s quite in the same ballpark as what the OP is talking about.
It will be a cold day in hell before the FBI scares everyone off the chat rooms and message boards, IMHO. Hell, we can be tracked by our grocery key-cards, right? I suppose we have to have faith in the legal system on this one…either that, or stay off-line.
Master Wang-Ka, I agree with your post–that can happen and has undoubtably happened before. Now will you tell me when in the past 100 years (let alone civilized history), in any nation, when that didn’t have a possibility of happening?
The possibility of having some one with a grudge against you and making up enough shit about you to convince a court to issue a warrant is timeless. The police busting in on a ‘dangerous suspect’ with the warrant and “your ass becomes police property” is also timeless. What does it have to do with the OP?
Whoopsie. Bit of a hijack, there, now that you mention it.
Someone dropped the old chestnut “What are you worried about, if you’ve got nothing to hide then you don’t need to worry,” and I kind of saw red there, for a minute. I lived near Austin, where Steve Jackson Games is located, during the events of “The Hacker Crackdown,” and a couple years after that, I got my house searched by the police because someone thought my roommate was involved in a crime.
I didn’t have anything to hide. Didn’t mean I liked cops standing in my living room, giving me orders, and daring me to do anything about it.
Police, though, at least have to be responsible to local authorities. The Secret Service, on the other hand, is not.
In Jackson’s case, he wound up having to go to court and fight like a bastard for several years to have his non-illegal property returned to him by the government. They didn’t want to give him his stuff back, you see, despite the fact they failed to prove that any of it was illegal, in any way. The only reason they tackled Jackson in the first place was that one of his employees had a copy of a stolen (hacked) document on his computer at home (NOT the computer at work.) To their credit, upon checking Jackson’s hard drives, they found rough notes for something called “GURPS Cyberpunk” which seemed to be about hacking, cracking, and guns, among other things… but even after they figured out they were looking at a role playing game, they were certainly in no hurry to correct the wrongs committed upon Mr. Jackson and company. Judging from their handling of it, they seemed more apt to wait until Jackson ran out of lawyer money and went away, in fact.
The implication here is that if… I, for example… were to commit a computer crime and hack some data and hide it HERE, on my computer at HOME… and then brag about it HERE, on the Straight Dope Message Board…
…then the Secret Service would be justified in invading … um… the Chicago Reader? Cecil Adams’ house? YOUR house? Ed Zotti’s laptop? All of the above? Who knows? Well, actually, who cares? They’re the Secret Service, and they can do what they want, and if you don’t like it, be prepared to hire a lawyer and spend a few years appealing your case. Jackson got justice, but it was neither quick nor cheap.
You need “probable cause” of some sort to justify a search-and-seizure… but it seems to me that in the Age Of The Internet, “probable cause” is gett’n’ to be more and more a slippery thing…
This is the part of the OP’s link that bothered me most (bolding added):
- These chat rooms’ servers have IPs and probably e-mail addresses (if not much more) stored on them about both the regulars and the “just-passing-through” users. Since the FBI was looking for someone who may have hacked someone else’s computer through the aforementioned chat hosting service, everyone came under scrutiny.*
I have scant sympathy for any social predators–hackers, terrorists or anything in between–but some cures can inflict more widespread damage than the disease. Then again maybe again it’s my own reluctant cynicism about government power left unchecked.
I don’t doubt this raid was conducted for probable cause; fine and good. I just have serious reservations about how far the information netted should extend. On one hand, it’s not unreasonable to suspect that people seeking out suspect information just might be up to no good. On the other hand, information is neutral. Just (possibly) possessing it doesn’t imply intent of anything beyond curiosity.
It’s easy to say, “Why worry if you have nothing to hide?” but at what point should people have to go on the defensive and proove…anything? How does a person prove a negative? And who doesn’t have something they’d rather keep private, i.e. hidden, even if it’s just something personal and inconsequential?
I wish I trusted government’s restraint and probity–but I don’t. Too many things, from sodomy laws to random drug tests, increasingly seem to place the burden of proof on citizens that they aren’t criminals. Small things used as wedges can be very dangerous for all involved.
I don’t see this as any different than real life.
Consider: If someone is murdered in a hotel, everyone in the hotel might be a suspect. If a bank is robbed, anyone who was in the vicinity at the time might be a suspect. If a tag is torn off a mattress… well, you get the idea.
So people who were on a chat room will be checked out. So what? The feds can’t look at everyone. So they undergo a process of elimination… just like in real life.
Don’t like being a suspect? Well, then you better not go ANYWHERE, bucko, because eventually it’s gonna happen. Hell, the only way to avoid it is to not EXIST. And that has nothing to do with government, or “Big Brother”, or nothin’… because if you were at the scene of a crime - even a virtual crime - that means you had SOME connection to the event.
And the Feds know this. Which is why they’re probably not gonna be hauling in all the people that went through that chat site.