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How safe is it to post personal things in this forum?

18:54 / 08.12.06

Being a journalist, and even just a normal citizen in this day and age, I worry about having my calls tapped, emails read, and blogs sifted through. It is not something that I spend too much time thinking about, but my buddy has a Myspace blog he uses to rant away his frustrations and he claims to have recently had men in suits show up to his front door to have a nice little chat about his political convictions. Given, he was ranting about how much he hates a certain president and calling said president a war criminal and suggesting his own brand of punishment for said president. That got me thinking. How much is what we write here monitored?

The NSA recently claimed the authority to tap the phones (to my understanding, both office and personal lines) of reporters to curtail the amount of "security leaks" from government employees. This is a problem, it almost reminds me of an abusive father threatening to beat his children if they tell the family secrets.

Also, I am working on a story dealing with privacy violations in my small town.

The local sheriff seems to know when drug deals are going down, and who has drugs in their house (by the way, we are mostly talking about people smoking pot, and a small group dealing small amounts to their friends, not full time drug dealers slinging crack), and he keeps raiding houses without probable cause, saying only that "I had a tip". But because he has always found some amount of drugs no one has been able to get this guy in any type of trouble.

All of those arrested have one thing in common, they had spoken about their drugs on a cell phone. A number of us are thinking that the sheriff illegally listens to cell phone conversations and then busts people accordingly, claiming that he had an informant.

I am not presenting any of this as fact, but am wondering if I am way off base to spend any of my mental facilities wondering about any of this?

19:07 / 08.12.06

as a rule i assume total visibility.
i also figure that no government has time to monitor every communication, and that you'd have to do something to make them look at you.

your internet use is a log anyay, so you're not safe if they really want to find ways to fuck you.

22:31 / 08.12.06

All of those arrested have one thing in common, they had spoken about their drugs on a cell phone. A number of us are thinking that the sheriff illegally listens to cell phone conversations and then busts people accordingly, claiming that he had an informant.

Well there's a pretty easy way to test that out surely? Make a few phone calls mentioning an upcoming smokefest at someone's house and congregate with nothing illegal on the premises. Maybe do it a few times for the sake of consistency, theory proved or disproved as appropriate. I'm slightly cynical about this simply because I'd be surprised at a local sheriff having the equipment lying around to tap mobile phone conversations* but I'd still be interested to hear the results of such an experiment.

*Though I'm no expert in the technology involved I admit so maybe I'm just being naive

22:39 / 08.12.06

As an everday citizen I don't worry about this sort of thing too much - everyone being under surveillance is one thing, but ponying up the cash to actually compile a dossier (really to what end?) seems like quite another.

Then again, if I was habitually out of an evening fighting crime, I'm not sure if I'd be as complacent.

15:15 / 09.12.06

Though I'm no expert in the technology involved I admit so maybe I'm just being naive

Heheheh:
Law enforcement-grade scanners can monitor digital communications, but these are expensive and generally not available on the open marketplace.

There are some widely available scanners that'll pick up some kinds of cell phone transmissions pretty easily.

Here's something called a "cell phone recorder" that seems fairly innocuous -- like, recording conversations that come into your own cell phone -- except for this part:
connection to cell phone/pay phone not required, which makes me wonder how it works, and how far away you can be while recording.

On the not-exactly-the-same-thing,-but-you-should-know-anyway front:

Cell phones' capacity to act as homing devices are a matter of record.

There's also a post I just stuck in the Big Brother Technology thread in Lab about a court case that just revealed the FBI has the capability to turn on some cell phones remotely and use them as listening devices. They call them "roving bugs".

20:40 / 09.12.06

Who talks about drugs on a cell phone anyway? Never mention drugs on the phone, that's Rule Number One in the Paranoid Stoner Handbook.

00:52 / 10.12.06

I'm freaked out, now that you said that, Liger. I'm really too terrified to go bathroom.

(and I can't just 'let it all hang out' in n internet cafe, can I? Or c

11:26 / 10.12.06

Cell phones are not secure and should be turned off when you are discussing or doing things the authorities frown upon. They can indeed be switched on and off, or simply blocked, remotely.

Internet use is indeed logged, but you can use encryption to hide the content of what is transferred. "They" will still be able to map out your contacts (and that alone can provide more information than you'd think) but they won't be able to know what you're sending and that's a good thing. Install a decent proxyserver, use an anonymizer, ... GnuPG, Tor, Privoxy, Little Snitch (for Mac only, I think) are some tools I highly recommend. Stick to basic safety protocol.

Posting personal things on the internet is never a good idea, period.

13:20 / 10.12.06

Well the internet is not merely a collection of clients and servers, in the sense that your PC doesn't just make a direct instant connection to the 'Lith site. There's DNS servers and routers in between that your PC communicates with on the way to find whatever server is your end result, not to mention search engines.

Imagine a person stopping at info kiosks and asking for directions to the dope-info store, porn store, or anarchist cookbook store. Then imagine they have to get on a bus and announce that's where they'd like to go in order to get there. Then once they arrive they are recorded by video cameras in the store, which if requested by authorities must legally be handed over.

here's a book on Eschelon which is an infamous bit of the history of data mining.

To be clear your IRL offline activities can be easily tracked if you use a subway that requires end destination ticket verification or electronic toll payment devices for cars.

here's the ACLU site on it which is a bit more solid than a lot of interweebie conspiracy stuff.

But in short, if they want to find out what you have been saying the information is there and accessible.

16:32 / 10.12.06

Well, the walls are closing in. That’s how I feel, it may not be now-but soon governments will be so entrenched and secured by technology that it would be impossible to displace a tyrannical regime.

Sure we have the right to assemble, but if our governments became more corrupt than they are now and we feel the need to rise up (just like the founding fathers of the United States) and we were to have such meetings we would all end up in secret prisons in the middle east. But if you don’t agree with the people in power I suppose you are a terrorist.

If W. Bush had been living during the birth of the United States he wouldn’t have been a revolutionist, but he would have looked dashing in his red coat. I can hear him now: “The men responsible for the Boston Tea Party are terrorists and they need to be hunted down and shot.”

I am not saying that current terrorists are revolutionists, not by any means. But I am saying that terrorists have given more than one government an excuse to claim more and more power. And it seems a bit too convenient. And if our governments do become corrupt (and I know that it is not possible in this day and age for corrupt men to rise to power and do crazy shit) and the few of us that might rise to the challenge of a revolution are too afraid to put a stop to it while we have any chance then when it becomes too unbearable and we do rise up out of desperation we will be whisked away and labeled as terrorists.

And the masses will be so terrified of every shadow that they wont even think to question.

News anchors on the Fox network will announce that there was a small band of United States citizens that have converted to Islam and had plans to carry out terrorist activities.

People will talk about it at breakfast, they might know deep down that they are fucked and being lied to, but to really accept that fact is too frightening. We all want to continue with business as usual and we are entirely too ready to accept slight losses in our freedoms and lifestyles to ensure a mostly status queue tomorrow.

We are treading the water in the pot, and the heat is slowly rising.

17:42 / 10.12.06

or 'those who would trade liberty for safety deserve neither'.

The Founders fully expected the US to have a good ol' school ass kicking mini revolts from time to time. They were trying to put in place a way for it to happen without epic blood shed or total breakdown.

...'the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots' is not a idle arm chair kind of statement.

However our current government is a far cry from that envisioned by the Founders. Most of the social programs would not be in existence and I'm fairly sure welfare won't be. The liberaterian party is probably the closest we have to the POV and that's about stripping the Fed and State gov back to bare bones. So chances are you might lose Big Brother meddling in your affairs but you'd also lose after school programs, medicare, and a bunch of others.

18:32 / 10.12.06

You make a good point, our social structure has changed but the ideals that the United States were found on are still applicable.

14:16 / 11.12.06

And the masses will be so terrified of every shadow that they wont even think to question.

Eek! I'm a masses!

14:17 / 11.12.06

Cell phones are not secure and should be turned off when you are discussing or doing things the authorities frown upon

I do not think that is true.

15:35 / 11.12.06

Officer assists drug raid target, Durham, North Carolina, 2006.

More here, including this excerpt from the photo's original caption:
Even if a raid doesn't turn up anything, presence and show of force sends a hard message to the neighborhood that gang and drug activity will not be tolerated.

This is where America is now.

And here, the court decision legalizing "roving bug" technology. It refers to the installation of listening devices in the cell phones belonging to (suspected) members of the Genovese crime family.

As Financial Times points out, these "devices" are not bits of hardware. They're software, installed by the cell phone service provider.

If ordered to do so, mobile telephone operators can also tap any calls, but more significantly they can also remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner's knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call, giving security services the perfect bugging device.

It's real technology.

15:37 / 11.12.06

Cell phones are not being monitored à la Echelon, but in my experience the police can and do use specific phones as listening devices, or control them remotely. The required technology is relatively basic, after all, and telephone companies are legally required to cooperate once the police have obtained a court order (not sure if that's the right word, but you know what I mean...). Which is the main reason why they don't bother unless in specific cases — lots of red tape.

If you're a known activist/subversive, then it's highly advisable to switch the thing off before attending your local Food Not Bombs meeting.

I've been at several demos and one RTS where a number of participants' (and organizers') cell phones would simultaneously go dead shortly before the police launched a raid. Call me paranoid, but I don't believe for a second that was coincidence.

I don't know the situation in the UK and other countries but I suspect it's fairly similar. The US... well, probably slightly worse at the moment.