mIRC Home    About    Download    Register    News    Help

Print Thread
Page 2 of 2 1 2
Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 2,962
S
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
S
Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 2,962
Quote:
We're not talking about aliens here... we're talking about a corporate for-profit entity who earns an income by arresting and charging people for copyright violation and conspericy, among other things. We're talking about people who electronically monitor all modes of communication in the name of Homeland Security.

- Is that a joke? Actually I guess I should phrase that as a statement, it is a joke. The question is, was that intended as a joke? If not you need to do some serious homework before you come up with this stuff. The FBI are not corporate and are not funded based on arrests. Nor do they 'electronically monitor all modes of communication'. Contrary to what the_truth_is_out_there34253 may have told you, the FBI can't magically intercept all electronic communications. Personally, at least half of the data from my computer never goes anywhere near a computer in the United States or it's territories, whether any other country in Europe is monitoring anything is open to debate, but the point is that the FBI couldn't see half of what I do online even if they cared to. All modes of communication also includes speaking and writing, are the FBI opening my mail? Have they laced my house with microphones? Not only are you perpetrating a completely false view of what the FBI are and of their capabilities to fuel some half-cocked conspiracy theory, but you're also completely off the point of the original subject of the thread (as am I now). Let's just let this thread rest in peace.


Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 2,812
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 2,812
Sorry, I was refering to all modes of electronic/internet communication.. my apologizes. And of course they dont have access to all overseas equipment.. but I can guarantee that all major US hubs have their traffic monitored.

My point is, the FBI doesn't exist to look pretty. They are actively monitoring (by monitoring I mean spying by every definition of the word) text communications. They didn't have these laws handed to them to put on the wall and look at, they are *wow* utilizing them. Perhaps you need to pay more attention to the_truth_is_out_there34253.


Well. At least I won lunch.
Good philosophy, see good in bad, I like!
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 428
P
Fjord artisan
Offline
Fjord artisan
P
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 428
Quote:
the FBI can't magically intercept all electronic communications.


Indeed. That's the job/aim of people like GCHQ in the UK and the NSA in the United States. Remember the fuss a couple of years ago when it was suggested that major corporations were getting access to supposedly confidential information on their competitors from the 'Aegis' system? (I think I remember the name right).

PM



IRCnet & DALnet @#travelersinn
:-: IRC for fun and relaxation :-:
Joined: May 2004
Posts: 2
M
Bowl of petunias
Offline
Bowl of petunias
M
Joined: May 2004
Posts: 2
Quote:
Well mIRC is developed in Britain so the FBI have no authority over it whatsoever. Even if any kind of 'chat tracking' was put into a client as high profile as mIRC without being explicitly stated that it contained such 'features' I'm almost certain beyond any doubt that it would breach some form of law and would leave mIRC Co. Ltd. wide open for lawsuits. Fortunately in Britain the government isn't quite so far ahead in it's ability to circumvent all basic privacy rights in the War Against Terrorâ„¢.


You articulate a stunning level of naiveté.

If you are poisoned by a tampered with bottle of aspirin you can find an attorney who will take your case (or your widow's case) and who will be able to find a court where a judge will hear it because the judge and his fellow members of the court, and police, and the federal and secret police, don't want to be poisoned or their families poisoned.

However, when a federal or secret police agency gets caught with their pants down, or a client of said agency does, you may succeed for a short time in getting an attorney to proceed with your case.

But...once the attorney is taken into the judge's chambers to meet with a high level officer of the fed/secret police and understands that this is a " matter of national security " your attorney will either tell you this (unlikely) or deceive you into believing that the case can't proceed because as "raccoon" stated in his lucid post "it was due to an error".

Remember, "9-11" and "al qaeda" are used to justify every sort of surveillance on the internet. The courts have never stood down such requests and almost every member of the national security state in every western nation is appalled at the level of anonymity possible in internet communications.

Just twenty years ago you could expect to have an FBI or even CIA file opened on you in the states for writing and receiving too many letters to foreign nations. Now you can talk in real time with people all over the world.

The governments of the west are in a state of abject fear which they are desperately trying to hide.

Given their ruthlessness and lethal ability to act you should be very concerned about such security matters and assume that anyone who starts screaming in a forum about "tinfoil hats" is an operative of such an entity concerned about a lucid post which reveals too much. You won't always be right about that assumption because of the copy cat nature of such posts, but more often than not you will. If challenged such a poster will attempt to defend itself by pointing out that it is a "long time member here" as if that disproved the suspicion.

I'm sure that the FBI, MI5, MI6, CIA and other lesser known (to me) police agencies have agents employed to monitor dozens of forums each day and to create personalities there which allow them to influence and even control discussions.

That's a big part of high level police and intelligence work.

Surely you have read reports about police posing as children? Why would you imagine that they limit such deceptive practices to pursuit of child molesters?

Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 2,962
S
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
S
Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 2,962
You're taking American policies and practices and assuming that they're present throughout the Western world, I can assure you that is not the case. In Britain and most -if not all- of Europe simply claiming something is a 'matter of national security' doesn't give anyone licence to do whatever they want at any cost. Of course spying is always going on, much of it illegal by anyone's laws - but that's all done in secret. As I explained in my previous post, putting logging into end user's software is impossible to hide, there aren't any governments in Europe who would want to risk the kind of backlash that would come about when the public realised that they were being monitored from their own computer by their own government.


Quote:
Given their ruthlessness and lethal ability to act you should be very concerned about such security matters and assume that anyone who starts screaming in a forum about "tinfoil hats" is an operative of such an entity concerned about a lucid post which reveals too much. You won't always be right about that assumption because of the copy cat nature of such posts, but more often than not you will. If challenged such a poster will attempt to defend itself by pointing out that it is a "long time member here" as if that disproved the suspicion.

- I think right here is where you left the rails. You honestly believe that there are tens of thousands of employees of government agencies just surfing the net contradicting people's conspiracy theories? It simply wouldn't happen. Not because they couldn't or due to any moral reason, but simply because they don't care. If a bunch of people posting on http[i][/i]://some.random.forum.com think that the government is spying on them and want to talk about it do you think someone at MI5 or the FBI suddenly thinks "we've got to stop them before they start a revolution! I know, let's call them paranoid!"? I think you grossly overestimate the importance placed by the government on your or anyone else's opinions. At most a single employee might glance over it's content and dismiss it as immaterial after having been caught, processed, and tagged as possibly noteworthy by some large-scale monitoring system.

I'm sure there are plenty of occurences in which a government agency oversteps the bounds of what I would consider reasonable and infringes on people's privacy, however utilising end-user software as government-endorsed spyware isn't one of them. I'm afraid that it's people who cry wolf about 'big brother' and government conspiracies who dilute the potency of valid concerns about privacy issues and help paint the picture that every internet privacy advocate is a paranoid nutball.


Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Joined: May 2004
Posts: 2
M
Bowl of petunias
Offline
Bowl of petunias
M
Joined: May 2004
Posts: 2
Quote:
You're taking American policies and practices and assuming that they're present throughout the Western world, I can assure you that is not the case. In Britain and most -if not all- of Europe simply claiming something is a 'matter of national security' doesn't give anyone licence to do whatever they want at any cost.


British police do not need to claim anything. Britain has the most intrusive laws governing ISP logging of their customers, the English were pioneers in this area.

Quote:
As I explained in my previous post, putting logging into end user's software is impossible to hide, there aren't any governments in Europe who would want to risk the kind of backlash that would come about when the public realised that they were being monitored from their own computer by their own government.


What backlash are you referring to? The ACLU freely admits that the American people by huge majorities do not support the First Amendment of their Constitution. I recall someone from the ACLU saying that 90% of the American people do not support free speech when challenged.

I know that a majority of people will openly support the monitoring of their activities to prevent crime and "terrorism".

Most of the so-called "civil libertarians" in America are either such frauds or of such grand incompetence that often I feel compelled -for a split second- to side with their jackboot opponent because their arguments are so weak.

It's like listening to an NRA spokesman claim that he needs his rifle or handgun to "hunt deer".

The writers of the Constitution did not give the public of 1776 the right to own guns so they could hunt for food, but to defeat any attempt at government tyranny. A proper reading of the Constitution thus means that today we would all have the right to bear Stinger anti-aircraft missiles so we could shoot down jet fighters and helicopters and anti-tank rounds to defeat armored personnel carriers and tanks such as what were used at Waco.

Essentially the Founders of America gave the citizenry the right to say whatever they wanted, and the right to kill anyone who would deny them this right.

Quote:
I think right here is where you left the rails. You honestly believe that there are tens of thousands of employees of government agencies just surfing the net contradicting people's conspiracy theories? It simply wouldn't happen. Not because they couldn't or due to any moral reason, but simply because they don't care. If a bunch of people posting on http://some.random.forum.com think that the government is spying on them and want to talk about it do you think someone at MI5 or the FBI suddenly thinks "we've got to stop them before they start a revolution! I know, let's call them paranoid!"? I think you grossly overestimate the importance placed by the government on your or anyone else's opinions. At most a single employee might glance over it's content and dismiss it as immaterial after having been caught, processed, and tagged as possibly noteworthy by some large-scale monitoring system.


No, that's too many. Perhaps eight hundred to a thousand or so, that's all that's necessary. In fact, given the prevalence of bots used to monitor traffic in conjunction with supercomputers a few hundred may be all that is needed.

Most Web forums are populated by idiots and thus would be flagged so. No need for any input. With pooling of resources (people) a few hundred cops is all that is needed.

I don't know of any western nations which do not work with the FBI and CIA. Private corporations in all these nations also work with them and do not talk about it. Most people are scared of losing their jobs at a minimum and some of us know the answer to the question posed to Robert Redford in "Three Days of the Condor".

"Will they print it?

No.

They work very hard to make us believe they will, but the answer -if it's really significant- is "no".

Articles such as this one give the game away if you remember it.

I have never read a truly critical article about the FBI and their inability to arrest real Internet criminals.

For instance: Business Week magazine ran an article about two years ago about identity information and credit cards being traded over IRC. Business Week gave up the names of the chat rooms on DALnet which were being used.

I logged onto them a week later and found all of this to be true. I was further stunned a couple of months later when I tried again and everything was operating as usual. We are talking about people's full identities being given away in the open channel.

True this is not going on in DALnet channels anymore, but it is still going on via IRC two years later.

The New York Times and all other media outlets are obviously aware of this, but they write nothing about it. That is proof of a working relationship between the FBI and the so-called "mainstream" media.

This hacker/cracker/identity thief who keeps this going runs his Web site teaching the trade two years on. He calls himself (or herself I suppose) "GSD". This individual should be more famous than Kevin Mitnick, but is not because the FBI can't find him, and until they do -if they do- he will get not a drop of ink in the media from those who know about him.

Here's something else to think about: Only one virus writer has ever been caught. The rest are "script kiddies" who altered another existing virus.

Your virus/Trojan scanner is only useful against known viruses and Trojans which are "in the wild". Nothing is ever mentioned about that by the media. Truly malicious trojans used to gather real information from someone are probably in broad use by police and intelligence agencies. Private dicks probably use them as well for illegal purposes. No doubt individuals -true hi-tech crooks- have written and successfully used their own.

Was the Justice Department's (top control of FBI) suit against Microsoft really about anti-trust violations or was it about gaining backdoor access to Windows? Is that why so many backdoors to Windows keep popping up, and after discovery remain unfixed up to seven months later despite the bad publicity eventually generated?

Why does it take so many months for the media to report on such vulnerabilities? If a noted Web site with ties to big corporations and law enforcement reports on its Web site that total access to Windows XP can be gained -but withholds the info- why would the "mainstream" media not immediately report this news? Does the FBI share security info with the media to prevent their being victimized and thus assure them of their own security while the vulnerability goes unfixed?

So the answer to the question posed to Robert Redford is definitely "no".

Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 2,985
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 2,985
British police do not need to claim anything. Britain has the most intrusive laws governing ISP logging of their customers, the English were pioneers in this area.

ISPs in Australia log activity too but not by choice, it's a government requirement and it's not just activity itself but for dialup customers even the number they connect from is logged as well. Perhaps you believe that people are oblivious to this. On the other side of the coin is a little thing called the Privacy Act, which among other things governs what ISPs can do with the information they collect and how the information can be stored and for how long it must be held, etc. Can a spy agency here just help themselves to the information? No. They have to get a court order ad to get that they have to explain to the magistrate why they require the information. Telling the court that the FBI (or any other spy agency) wants it is not good enough and would be laughed at every step of the way.

I think you would be pleasantly surprised as to what lengths are required to obtain personal information about other people. The AFP (Australian equivalent of the FBI) can't even hold a suspected terrorist for more than 48 hours without laying charges so what hope have they got trying to arrest someone who was distributing a few movies or songs on IRC which isn't harming anything aside from the greedy pockets of multinational record companies. It is my suggestion that most western countries have a similar situation. Your belief that the FBI is the recipient of conveyor belt loads of information about non-US citizens is a patent case of make-believe. You need to stop watching "Greatest American Hero" and look at the real world.

Page 2 of 2 1 2

Link Copied to Clipboard