Interesting People mailing list archives
more on Who they're spying on
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 13:57:24 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: h_bray () globe com Date: June 8, 2006 12:51:52 PM EDT To: Tom Fairlie <tfairlie () frontiernet net>, dave () farber net Subject: Re: [IP] more on Who they're spying onSome members of this list seem more eager to engage in bitter denunciation
of the present administration, than to offer ideas about how best to reconcile the conflicting interests of freedom and security.It doesn't make the slightest difference who's in the White House, or who's
in control of Congress. Fanatic Islamic terrorists will keep right on trying to kill us, as they are trying to murder Canadians, Indonesians,Frenchmen, Filipinos, Spaniards, Sudanese, Somalis, and pretty much anyone
else who rejects their vision of the world. The Clinton era gave us a series of brutal islamic terror attacks on US interests, including the first WTC bombing. And when Bush is gone, Muslim fanatics will continue trying to kill Americans. No matter who you vote for, the problem isn'tgoing away. So we'd better think seriously about the best ways to defend
our country.We're up against murderers who use sophisticated covert tactics, designed to let them hide their activities and intentions until they strike. They rely upon the free institutions of liberal societies to help them in this. Therefore, many of their activities cannot be prevented by traditional law
enforcement techniques, which are rightly constrained by rules that set firm limits on police power. Fighting such people, therefore, requires the use of new tactics beyond those normally used by police organizations. Yet these tactics can alsoerode the liberty and privacy rights which we take for granted. How do we
strike the right balance? I'd have thought that a listserv like this one, crammed with seriousthinkers, might address the matter seriously. If the members believe that
the current approach is all wrong, they could do us all a lot of good bylaying out an alternative plan. I hoped my post would inspire just such a
discussion. Guess not. Hiawatha Bray "Tom Fairlie" <tfairlie@frontiernet.net> To
<dave () farber net>06/07/2006 11:45 cc
PM <h_bray () globe com>Subject Re: [IP] more on Who they're spying
on Rubber meets the road? How about we just stop pissing on or at the rest of the world and diminish and/or remove the motivations that a "bad guy" would have in the first place. It's oh so simple if your goal was actually and honestly world peace, liberal democracy, liberty, etc. However, when your policy is global domination and you put a bunch of cowboys in charge who challenge the "bad guys" to "bring it on" then you get what ask for. I'm never going to vote for, suggest, approve, justify, or otherwise accept a policy that diminishes my freedoms, my rights, or my liberties because of some narrow-minded vision that the "boogie man" is out there gunning for me. I live in peace and make no enemies. You can too! Try it. Tom Fairlie ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Farber" <dave () farber net> To: <ip () v2 listbox com> Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 12:17 PM Subject: [IP] more on Who they're spying on Begin forwarded message: From: h_bray () globe com Date: June 7, 2006 1:00:21 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Subject: Re: [IP] more on Who they're spying on Well, yes. But here's where rubber meets road. It'd be darn near impossible to investigate this kind of network if you had to get probable cause-based warrants at every turn. Often, you have no idea why somebody is calling someone else, or being called by them. So you can't tell a judge what you expect to find. But if you can check who's calling who--even if you don't know what they're saying--you can extract pattern data that'll give you some serious clues. This is what the government's been doing, and catching hell for. And although the story doesn't say so, it's a good bet that this technique helped them roll up these thugs. So do we really want the government to be barred from doing this? Or if we want to put it under more intensive oversight, how do we manage that without crippling the operation? It just seems to me that the debate over this issue has mostly consisted of hand-wringing about our loss of liberties. It's a legitimate concern, but there's something else at stake too, and this story reminds us what it is. Hiawatha Bray David Farber <dave () farber net> To 06/07/2006 12:32 ip () v2 listbox com PM cc Subject Please respond to [IP] more on Who they're spying on dave () farber net Begin forwarded message: From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb () cs columbia edu> Date: June 7, 2006 12:20:42 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Cc: h_bray () globe com Subject: Re: [IP] Who they're spying on On Wed, 7 Jun 2006 11:53:48 -0400, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:
In all the fuss about the NSA spying issue, it's sometimes forgotten that there are real bad guys out there, who badly need to be spied on. Here's a story that makes the point, from today's London Times.
The issue has never been whether or not there are bad guys or even whether or not there should be spying. The issue is the authorization to do so, and the checks and balances on surveillance requests. The Fourth Amendment recognized this, more than 200 years ago. It doesn't outlaw searches; it does, however, require an outside check on what is to be searched and why. Without such checks, we're open to arbitrary abuses of executive power. We've already seen the claim that the government is using the phone call databases to track down leakers. Is this legal? I'm hard-put to think that it is, since they're using the very sort of broad spectrum fishing that is specifically barred by the Fourth Amendment. (By the way, don't make the mistake of thinking that traffic analysis is new, and hence unanticipatable by the framers of the Bill of Rights. I recently stumbled on a report of a spy, noting who was meeting, how frequently, and how many messages were sent out following such meetings. This was in 1603.) --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as bray () globe com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting- people/ ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as tfairlie () frontiernet net To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ipArchives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting- people/
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