-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- from:alt.conspiracy As, always, Caveat Lector Om K ----- Click Here: <A HREF="aol://5863:126/alt.conspiracy:596228">INTERNET SPYING - BUILDING IN BIG BROTHER</A> ----- Subject: INTERNET SPYING - BUILDING IN BIG BROTHER From: <A HREF="mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ">[EMAIL PROTECTED] </A> (E Right) Date: Fri, Feb 18, 2000 5:07 PM Message-id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> INTERNET SPYING - BUILDING IN BIG BROTHER Submitted for your approval, building in Big Brother in Russia, China, and Amerika: ------------------------------------------------------------- RUSSIA: New KGB Takes Internet by SORM (1) The Russian government has just authorized itself to spy on everything its citizens do on the Net -- and to punish ISPs that won't help. So much for post-Soviet civil rights. MOSCOW www.motherjones.com 2/4/00-- Human rights activists were outraged when Russia's KGB successor agency, the FSB, launched a grand project -- code-named SORM -- to spy on its citizens' Internet transmissions. But as if that weren't disturbing enough, last month acting President and ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin gave the Orwellian project a momentous but little-noticed power boost: Now, not only is the long-feared FSB allowed to implement the spy technology and use it at will, but so are seven other federal security agencies, including the tax police and interior ministry police. The new SORM technology, opponents charge, allows security agencies to bypass the legal requirement to obtain a warrant before monitoring private correspondence, and will put an end to privacy and to the Internet as an instrument of democracy. It was a significant decision for an acting president's first week in office, and one that may be a sign of where Putin is taking Russia's fledgling democracy. "This means Russia has officially become a police state," said Yelena Bonner, human rights activist and wife of the late Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, in a telephone interview from Boston. The chairman of Citizens' Watch human rights group in St. Petersburg, Boris Pustintsev, called the move "the end of all email privacy." "It was bad enough that the FSB had unlimited control over confidential correspondence, and now it is multiplied seven times," Pustintsev said. "You can't fight a monster with eight heads." The 1995 Law on Operational Investigations gave the FSB the authority to monitor all private communications, from postal correspondence to cell-phone calls and electronic mail, provided the security service first obtained a warrant from the court. SORM, which in Russian stands for System for Operational-Investigative Activities, is a regulation intended to provide the FSB with the technical means to put these monitoring powers into action. According to original drafts of the SORM regulation, Internet service providers themselves are required to foot the bill for the expensive technology and even train FSB officers to use the equipment to spy on their clients. The regulation requires all ISPs to install a little "black box" rerouting device, and to build a high-speed communications line, which would hot-wire the provider -- and necessarily, all Internet users -- to FSB headquarters. By rerouting all transmissions in real time to FSB offices, the agency can readily skip the legal obstacle of first obtaining a warrant and gain unfettered access to all communications conducted by clients of Russian ISPs. In theory, a warrant would be needed to actually read any of the documentation piling up in the FSB's hands. But in practice, critics say, the FSB is unlikely to worry about such legal niceties when the information it wants is just a mouse-click away. [...] The memory of the state's powerful control over the population is still fresh in most minds. "You remember the KGB, don't you?" said Yury Vdovin, deputy chairman of Citizens' Watch. "They're used to collecting dossiers on citizens, just in case. They collected, collect and will continue to collect information on us," he said. The FSB says SORM will help law enforcement track and capture criminals ranging from "tax evaders to pedophiles" because such people may conduct or discuss their business electronically. "SORM is a normal system for locating criminals and tax evaders. The United States has such a system -- every country does," said Yelena Volchinskaya, a consultant for the State Duma Security Council, which is charged with evaluating the progress of SORM. The US government does indeed have an email=monitoring program -- and one that also circumvents the courts. The US National Security Agency's Echelon project, though still highly secretive, is reportedly used to monitor and store email and other electronic communications around the world. Nonetheless, some US Internet and privacy experts find SORM-2 more disquieting than Echelon. "Echelon and its allied systems in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand take the technology as it finds it -- that is, Echelon is not coercive. It does not rely upon government-mandated surveillance features being built into telecom systems, " said Jim Dempsey, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington. "With SORM-2, Russia is going farther than any other democratic country in controlling the design of private-sector communications systems for surveillance purposes." -- by Jen Tracy Feb. 4, 2000 (1) <A HREF="http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/sorm.html">http://www.mother jones.com/news_wire/sorm.html</A> ------------------------------------------------------------- CHINA: China Tries to Tighten Control on Internet BEIJING (AP 1/26/00) - Trying to tighten its hold on the fast-moving Internet, China is ordering companies to register software used to transmit sensitive data and threatening punishment for letting government secrets slip onto the Web.... Rules announced Wednesday formally extend China's vague state secrets law to the Internet. Everyone, from Internet sites to chat-room users, must gain approval from agencies protecting government secrets before publishing previously unreleased information on the Web... Forms require companies to hand over the serial numbers and list the employees using the software, possibly making it easier for the government to track use. ...China was worried that foreign encryption technology might contain secret pathways enabling outsiders to peer into Chinese businesses or government agencies. The clampdown also highlights government fears about the use of encrypted communications by political dissidents and the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement. Falun Gong followers have used e-mail and the Internet to meet and hold protests in defiance of a six-month ban. Chinese Web sites... lack of restraint comes despite repeated government regulations meant to bring the Internet under control. China has set up a special police force to monitor the Internet and has in criminal trials accused political dissidents and leaders of Falun Gong of disseminating anti-government views and state secrets on the Web. ------------------------------------------------------------ Amerika: Net Wiretapping: Yes or No? WIRED (10/13/99 - www.wired.com) 13.Oct.99.PDT The FBI says the Internet's standards body should craft technology to facilitate lawful government surveillance. A spokesman said Wednesday that the bureau supported the Internet Engineering Task Force's recent decision to debate whether the ability to wiretap should be part of future Internet standards. "We think it's a wise and prudent move," said Barry Smith, supervisory special agent in the FBI's Digital Telephony and Encryption policy unit. "If court-authorized wiretaps are frustrated, effective law enforcement is jeopardized, public safety is jeopardized, and policymakers are going to have to figure out how to rectify the problem." On Monday, the IETF announced it would consider whether to wire government surveillance into the next generation of Internet protocols, an issue that promises to cause the most acrimonious debate the venerable group has ever experienced. A meeting is scheduled for next month in Washington. Smith said members should recognize that the United States isn't the only country that allows government wiretapping. "I'm not aware of any country that does not allow for the use of electronic surveillance. -- by Declan McCullagh --- The evil incident to invasion of the privacy of the telephone is far greater than that involved in tampering with the mails. Whenever a telephone line is tapped, the privacy of the persons at both ends of the line is invaded, and all conversations between them upon any subject, and although proper, confidential, and privileged, may be overheard. Moreover, the tapping of one man's telephone line involves the tapping of the telephone of every other person whom he may call, or who may call him. As a means of espionage, writs of assistance and general warrants are but puny instruments of tyranny and oppression when compared with wire tapping. Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. United States 277 U.S. 438 (1928) ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! 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