Police want backdoor to Web users

Given the amount of people that openly smoke marijuana and openly admit to doing so (cops, regular people, celebrities), we would have to conduct an operation no smaller than the holocaust to stop all the pot crime. It's never gonna go away, so just deal it.

No, I don't smoke anything, believe it or not. Then again, I'm not an authoritarian psycho-path who equates 420 and marijuana to "criminal".

So, I wouldn't call yourself a criminal because you smoke, pal. It's not even worth the slightest guilt trip.

This legislation will be nothing short of just another tool to harass the smallest fish in the pond. Anyone the local police don't like, they harass, trump up charges, spy on.. all while the city councilmen they operate under commit heinous acts of extortion, bribery, fraud and embezzlement.



I can't wait. Word to the wise though, most of us "internet crooks" know a thing or two about spying also. So good luck to the local hick cops who want to try and play the game.

[edit on 3-2-2010 by SyphonX]

**** ATTENTION ****

Please get this discussion back on topic.

DO NOT discuss other members, habits etc.

Thank You.


and remember, we must be courteous to one another.

[edit on 3-2-2010 by elevatedone]

Originally posted by SyphonX
Given the amount of people that openly smoke marijuana and openly admit to doing so (cops, regular people, celebrities), we would have to conduct an operation no smaller than the holocaust to stop all the pot crime. It's never gonna go away, so just deal it.

No, I don't smoke anything, believe it or not. Then again, I'm not an authoritarian psycho-path who equates 420 and marijuana to "criminal".

So, I wouldn't call yourself a criminal because you smoke, pal. It's not even worth the slightest guilt trip.

This legislation will be nothing short of just another tool to harass the smallest fish in the pond. Anyone the local police don't like, they harass, trump up charges, spy on.. all while the city chairman they operate under commit heinous acts of extortion, bribery, fraud and embezzlement.

I can't wait. Word to the wise though, most of us "internet crooks" know a thing or two about spying also. So good luck to the local hick cops who want to try and play the game.

I look at it like this. You are 100% right with everything you have said, but when it comes to "Law", i understand law of the land is necessary for peace and to prevent chaos, such as "Do not murder", or else face imprisonment or death. Thats understandable.

When the law gets so broken down piece by piece, patriot act, warrant-less searches and seizures, using animals (K9) to find drugs (completely unethical, animals can't speak so how do we know 100% the animal is right? sadly, animals can grant the right to invade your priacy, and conduct an illegal search and seizure - because an ANIMAL "hinted" there might be drugs, contraband, etc. Don't even get me started on the fact that these K9 trainers are also secretly trained to 'trigger' the dog to 'signal' there are drugs, but in reality there are none but that would allow a search of the vehicle, etc.

corruption is everywhere. it is so deeply embedded within our system only the rich and elite are allowed to rob the citizens of this country - HOW DARE some computer hacker or some lady downloading some music online...HOW DARE SHE DO THAT...need i mention the patriot act again?

sad, so sad. they get away with so much and god forbid someone else break the "law"...THROW THEM IN PRISON! LOCK EM UP! KILL EM! sigh, the idiocy of the masses...

i question everything, and everyone. ever since i had a gun to my head and was nearly killed (6 days in the hospital with consults from neurosurgeons telling me my chances of survival) it's my nature. i don't trust the government one bit, in any way shape or form. they lost that trust before i was even born, i am just old enough now to educate myself and understand the true extent of the corruption.

this type of monitoring would only add to the hate i have for the government. i say...bring it on. i want things like this to happen so the public will finally friggin' respond...

[edit on 3-2-2010 by SRHAZE420]

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*** ATTENTION ***

Again.... STOP WITH THE OFF TOPIC POSTS and discussing each other.

Last Chance.

Originally posted by SphinxMontreal
Let me get this straight...you are advocating imprisoning someone because you assume they do not care about people who are being taken advantage of? After saying something as insidious as that, it is no wonder only a few whackjobs will agree with your stance.

No I was advocating imprisoning someone if they allow crimes to happen and not care. I didn't assume anything, he basically said himself he doesn't care. He might as well be an accomplice to the crime, that's illegal.

Knowing there is crime, and not stopping it, is illegal. Believe it or not...

...

So anyone who agrees with me is a whackjob you say? Well thanks for the insult. It seems nobody can speak on ATS without being insulted these days.

Originally posted by ALLis0NE

Originally posted by SphinxMontreal
Let me get this straight...you are advocating imprisoning someone because you assume they do not care about people who are being taken advantage of? After saying something as insidious as that, it is no wonder only a few whackjobs will agree with your stance.

No I was advocating imprisoning someone if they allow crimes to happen and not care. I didn't assume anything, he basically said himself he doesn't care. He might as well be an accomplice to the crime, that's illegal.

Knowing there is crime, and not stopping it, is illegal. Believe it or not...

...

So anyone who agrees with me is a whackjob you say? Well thanks for the insult. It seems nobody can speak on ATS without being insulted these days.

Then it boils down to what is a crime, and what isn't. Do you really think I'm going to follow what some 65 year old grey-haired men in congress tell me what to do when they do whats necessary to make as much money as possible? My human rights and interests are never served by the government, and never have been the true purpose of the feds. You are right, but your definition of 'crime' and 'criminal' are so far off in la-la-land it's not even worth explaining to you why you're wrong.

Originally posted by ALLis0NE
"We're".... "going to have to deal with".....

Are you a part of some terrorist group or something? Who is "we"? When you said "deal with", is that a threat?

You got something against law abiding citizens? Maybe you are on the wrong team then....

No pal. "WE", as in 'normal' people, who are not authoritarian psychopaths. WE, normal people, who just want to be able to sit in our homes quietly without having to worry about jackboot police thugs barging in as they please. Now they can do it on the internet.. Oh joy!

Originally posted by ALLis0NE
No I called him a criminal because he said, and I quote, "I support illegal activities".

That actually makes him a criminal.

Did you not think before you reacted?

Everyone here is a criminal, everyone here breaks the law on a near daily basis. He said he "supports illegal activities" or some such, but you have no basis or grounds to assume what it is he does. He alluded to smoking marijuana, which I would hardly call a criminal activity.

You're revealing yourself to be in law enforcement, or something similar. You'd be surprised how many of your brothers-in-shield smoke marijuana. Maybe you should go harass them instead?

Originally posted by ALLis0NE
Once upon a time.... (Blah Blah Blah, nice teary eyed nostalgic story there.)

Once upon a time, police held down a citizen and tazed his testicles and sodomized him with a police baton. Once upon a time, entire police precincts were cozy with the mafia, because the mafia payed well.

Once upon a time, citizens were able to protect themselves from thieves and murderers, but now people are beaten by the police and charged with felonies for protecting themselves in their own homes.

Originally posted by ALLis0NE
They are already on the internet. They just don't have any authority.

They will be investigating crimes and finding criminals, then stopping them. This is pretty much basic knowledge.

I can't talk to people like you... you are all conspiracy, no reality.

You think the corporations and media are big ol' monsters..

You think the law enforcement just wants to put you in jail for no reason!...

That's rich. Yeah, I'm delusional because I just make up all these stories of corporate perjury, fraud, extortion and the police completely protecting them. Usually on orders from the local authority, like the councilmen or mayor, or governor/senator. Yeah, I have no evidence on that one... heaven help me.

The only person not recognizing reality here, is you. You who thinks podunk police officers are going to stop internet crime. Well, good luck to them, they're gonna need it. Those brave officers of the law, god-speed.

Originally posted by ALLis0NE
Your biggest fears on display.

The biggest fears I have, are of people like you. You believe in crucifying people for the smallest of offenses and you scold people to no end who do not agree with you. You treat America like the burning Roman republic, while in it's flailing years, people just like you thought the country was in shambles because a peon citizen didn't pay his measly tax or because they broke the most minute of laws. So they were crucified and tortured, exiled, to be made example of, for the glory of Rome.

This isn't Rome, or some other authoritarian empire, this is America.

Originally posted by ALLis0NE
Ok, don't play stupid. I know why you are so angry. You too are a criminal, and you are guilty of something. I know deep down you are worried about going to jail. Worried about getting caught doing something illegal..... You just want to be free, to do illegal things right.... You are not fooling anyone.

Yeah, I'm a criminal, and so are you. Every citizen in the United States can be charged for breaking the law, from at least one point in their lives. Pray tell me, what law hath I forsaken? Thou seem to knoweth thyself so well. Please enlighten me.



I gotta give it to the idealists. At least they try and do something when they realize the country isn't doing so well. What a world we could live in if everybody who committed the smallest of crimes was put behind bars or fined into oblivion. What a place, if only to exist in the dreamiest of dreams... Oh authoritopia, where are you?



[edit on 3-2-2010 by SyphonX]

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STOP TALKING ABOUT DRUGS!

I'm sick and tired of idiots on ATS getting good threads shut down because they feel they have to talk about inappropriate topics. If you want to talk about smoking pot, go do it somewhere else. This is an interesting thread and all you're going to do is have it locked.

Stay on topic like the moderator has had to say I believe THREE times now.

"You can be very supportive of law enforcement investigations and at the same time be very cognizant and supportive of the privacy rights of our users." --Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer, MySpace

I suppose because of this man's stance, then it is evident that he too, is a criminal. I guess we should all waive this man's statement because it is obvious he is a criminal with a criminal stance.

Seriously though, think about it.

If police were given the authority to operate on the net with near to no impunity, then what we are going to see is a horrible, horrible turn of events. I'm sorry, but "drugs" does have a lot to do with this topic because this topic is about the police and the law. Drugs happen to be one of the most enforced laws in the land, and usually followed by the most harshest of punishments. It's also one of the biggest factors when it comes to local cops asking for information from their friends or family. They're always after the pot, or whatever the local flavor is.

What's going to happen, which isn't far from the truth now, is that police will start trying to infiltrate social networks to "get the scoop" on rumors and events. Such as high school kids throwing a party, or a couple of kids talking about drugs. Now, they can technically do this without being granted more authority, because one does not need a special license to do simple things such as, be on Facebook.

However, with authority, they will be able to do damn well whatever they please. Anyone on the internet knows full well how, "What's said on the internet, doesn't necessarily stay on the internet." Meaning, stuff put on the internet has an uncanny way of "changing" or "disappearing". So to frame someone or to make a false-arrest would be unbelievably simple.

The police are basically asking for expedited search warrants and a legal nod to warrant-less surveillance. And we are talking about the "police", not the FBI, or Homeland Security.. The Police. Your local, run-of-the-mill podunk police station wants to form a new Intahnet Task Force. It will be used to harass people for the most ridiculous of smallest crimes.

The FBI, Homeland Security and the like, handles everything else as they always have. They deal with fraud, extortion and other high-crimes. The police, will not be doing this, because they don't have the training, resources (or intelligence) to handle investigations of this magnitude in a chaotic realm such as the internet.

The police can shove it on this one, and they can stick to the streets like they are supposed to. If some cop wants to play cyber-enforcer, he can quit and join the FBI where he can at least operate with proper supervision.


[edit on 3-2-2010 by SyphonX]

reply to post by ALLis0NE


Let me attempt to explain why this is a problem.

All communications take place within context. Verbal, non-verbal and electronic. Of all of these forms of communication, electronic communication is devoid of context, therefore the opportunity to infer inacurate motive is high. When you couple multiple forms of communication being used on the same topic, e.g. an e-mail following up a conversation, the probability is multiplied. As a consequence you will have government authorities making inferrence. Here's an example:

Your friend has a litter of puppies. He is going to give you one and you have a conversation with him about it. You're going to take a female puppy.

You send him a note saying "Oh, I just can't wait to get that little girl home with me. I'm going to love her up" Taken out of context, you're child molester. Now, I suppose you could send him a note that goes something like. "John pertaining to the litter of wirehaired terriers you have, one of which you have agreed to give to me, I will take the female PUPPY and will certainly give her a good home."

I just don't think that is a reasonable safeguard that you should have to make. Further a child molester could refer to children as wirehaired terriers, hence the entire effort is moot.

Or how about this one. You have a kid who has done something awful, like got spray paint all over your car while doing something in your garage and not being careful. You send an e-mail to your friend "I can't wait until Joey gets home from school because I'm going to kill him". Does that mean that you're going to kill your kid? Does that mean that you're going to lay a hand on him? NO

Here is what happens in a commercial enterprise. I know because I have been directly involved in securing electronic communications due to both regulatory inquiries as well as client lawsuits.

You get a suppoena or a "letter to deliver electronic records regarding such and such matter". The request is ALWAYS overly broad. You sit down with the other party and negotiate a reasonable scope. Things like which people, what date ranges, what key words, what strings of words, etc. Typically you get to a scope much smaller than the original request.

Some person in IT runs the querey on the e-mail system which produces 1000s of documents in some cases. Your lawyers go through each e-mail and pull out the ones that are relevant to the matter in hand. To the extent that they purposefully exclude relevant documents they will be sanctioned, jailed or disbarred.

The documents are provided to the other party and the deal goes from there.

A bunch of problems.

e-mail with attached documents with e-mail text which is not within the negotiated scope may well contain relevant information but they will be not be picked up in the search.

unless you have the kind of e-mail retention mechanism that automatically journals e-mail at the time of receipt of send in a mirrored fashion (expensive infrastructure), e-mails can be sent and deleted immediately and hence not recovered.

I can go on and on about why this is rife for abuse. What they are looking for is a blanket ability to search all electronic activity which is a scope which is far too broad.

What ever happened to the presumption of innocence, reasonable doubt and the general safeguards regarding reasonable search and seizure.

If they pass this it will be overturned by the Supreme Court. It is without question unreasonable search and seizure. It is absolutely no different than the police putting a bug in your house. Period.

As far as illegal activity that occurs on the web, regardless of the technology available in society there will always be criminals. I'm sorry, but law enforcement today, just as they had to with the advent of the telephone, will have to get smarter in catching criminals whilst protecting our constitutional rights.

Finally, they will never get smart enough. Law enforcement practices require a methodology which takes time to develop and implement. Criminal activity is by definition designed to avoid those methodologies. The criminal will always have the upper hand. Always have always will. For the government to continue to reach to stop criminal behavior whilst in the practice eroding our rights is not only a fools errand (and of course they know it is). It is at the very least suspect.

reply to post by dolphinfan


You wasted your time. I already said that I see the pros and cons. Which is why all the people that insulted me already on this topic are foolish for jumping to conclusions.

However, you are taking the OP out of context, just like you fear the authorities would do.

See you and others are jumping to large conclusions thinking that some police officers are going to be watching your every search term, your every e-mail, your everything...... and send you to jail because of that.... you have already jumped to the conspiracy conclusion.... closed your mind, and sealed your fate. Yes this is a conspiracy website, but that doesn't mean everything is a conspiracy.

The police are just asking for investigation help. Not spying help.

If you would have read the article more clearly, you would see that they mention how hard it is to get information from certain Internet Service Providers...ISP's...

When someone commits an internet crime, which I just got done explaining is a very big problem on the net, people call the authorities for help. The authorities then "investigate". It is very hard for them to investigate internet crime because there is a very small trail to follow.

If some how the victim got an IP address of the internet criminal, well that is only a start. On the internet no two computers connect directly to each other, there is always "hops" from one ISP to another. When authorities try to investigate, they have to go to every single ISP and ask for records just to see where the criminal originated. Well IP's constantly change, and it is a big task to look up and find out who had a certain IP at a certain time... some ISP's don't even keep track anymore because they would have to store files of enormous sizes.

Police are just asking for access to IP records so they can find out who leases a certain IP at a certain time, so they can get some clues. Right now in the current state of the internet they can still do that, but they have to wait for the ISP's to research and respond, and it takes forever.... that is a bottleneck in the investigation and could actually help criminals get away.

Police just want better access to ISP records to make their job easier. Not to spy on you, because nobody cares what you do unless you commit a crime.

You can be a conspiracy n.j. and jump to spying conclusions, or you can be a criminal and complain because you will get caught easier, or you can cry about your "freedoms" being lost even though you won't really loose anything that isn't already gone.......

....but in reality, the internet is PUBLIC, the ISP's are owned by the corporations you fear, people commit crimes on computers and police need help stopping it. This isn't about spying.

I know this is a conspiracy website..... so all you people care about is the conclusion no matter if it is true or false..... so.... you can save your breath. Don't reply to me with your fear and scare tactics.

Quick example I wanted to point out...

Imagine you are in a Wal-Mart, a major corporation. Then some thief comes by and takes your wallet and money, and Wal-Mart catches it on their security camera.

You call the police, and they start to investigate....however.... Wal-Mart is not giving them quick and instant access to the security camera. Wal-Mart needs to go through the hours and hours of old security tape, and find it, and then send it to the police....etc... By the time Wal-Mart is done, the criminal is already in Mexico... gone.

The situation above is basically what it is like with ISP's and internet crime. Wal-Mart is the ISP, the security camera is their IP records. Police don't have direct access to the ISP's IP records, so their investigation is slowed down and altered by the ISP's.

Police are asking for help in this area of growing crime. The internet is like a virtual world... but a world with a lack of authority and law. We all know nobody likes the law until they need them for help.... so nobody wants more authority on the net, but it IS NEEDED.

The internet is still a new thing.....more and more people are using it for business, so expect some big changes to happen in the law enforcement area.

Let me be a scared conspiracy lover for a second just for fun!

-sarcasm on-

OMG! I'm going to type terrorist in Google search and then get sent to prison for it!


Oh No! Some super spy is going to mistake my casual chat about science and technology, and the atom bomb, and e=mc2, and then send me to prison!! -cry-


They took our freedom!!! They just want us to be slaves!!! -cry- They want to keep track of my footprints on the internet... OMG! Even though the internet is mainly public domain, they are taking my privacy! Oh nooeessss!!

The corperations just want more money!!1 Oh yeah, even though the corperations own all the ISP's, I'm worried about the police taking my stolen music and videos and apps from me so the corperations can get more money! -cry-


Oh great, now I'm a terrorist because I sent and e-mail to a friend saying I don't like Obama.... they are going to send me to prison!!

-sarcasm off-


See, I can do what you all do too.... I see the pros and cons..... but I also see the stupidity, fear, and the jumping to conspiracy conclusions.




[edit on 4-2-2010 by ALLis0NE]