[tirsales]

I appologize in advance for the political and long response.

1. There is nothing more important than human rights and the rights of citizens. NOTHING. The right to live is a direct result from the human rights.
2. No. The protection of a state is NOT more important then human rights. Not the citizen should protect the state - the state should protect the citizen. That is the ONLY reason a state exists. Thus - I dont have to give up freedom to protect a state. At the most I have to give up freedom to protect other peoples right.

I wont even think about discussing those points. They are just matter of fact statements to help understanding my point of view.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

You mean enact real security on the web? Mmm, oh, I dunno... maybe in an attempt to rein in hackers, viruses, identity theft, copyright infringement and piracy, not to mention maintaining national sovereignty, security and economy?

Yeah, just like e.g. you can walk every street without any precaution without fear of getting robbed? No, you cant. And you never will. Just as the internet will never be free of crime.
No amount of censorship or national despotism could change that. And thus there is NO reason for censorship or despotism.

Originally Posted by pilotbob

What I don't understand is how you "think" it protects you? You did read 1984?

You know how they say, if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns? I think this applies here too.

BOb

Thanks.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

And with each one of these technologies, the public has lost a measure of anonymity, privacy, and control, but accepted that in the name of safer streets, lit-up homes, phones that could call anyone in the world, and credit cards usable anywhere we went.

Nope, I did not accept that. And I never will.

We've also seen governments exercise their sovereign right to secure and protect themselves by regulating international access to many common services, like telephones (same notation as above), transportation, banking, etc.

Yeah. Have a look which states.

What makes you think the Internet can't be regulated? There is absolutely nothing to prevent the Internet ending up like that, if governments decide it needs to be done. And you might even learn to like it, when you don't have to sweat viruses, hackers, spam, DDOS attacks, and botnets anymore.

Again: Just as there is no crime out in the real world, there will be no crime in the internet. There was crime in the 3rd Reich, there was crime in Stalins Soviet union, there will be crime in the despotic nation you are describing.

Because, frankly, the whole Anarchy thing we have now isn't solving any of those problems.

It is not? The internet is working, isnt it? You are selling your books, arent you? I can chat in freedom and without fear of repression with you - even about a topic as sensitive as this one is becoming. All this would change.

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Perhaps we should start building all public rest rooms with transparent walls. Perhaps people would then understand why I feel violated knowing my phone can be tapped and my mail can be inspected for no good reason.

BOb

Correct.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

One word:

China.

1. They wasnt able to close their borders completely - only making it hard to pass the filters

And if China could close up its digital borders, the U.S., say, could do it as well, and rid the country of traffic from Russia, Korea, Nigeria, etc, etc, as they wished.

You are talking censorship here. No, we wont accept traffic from Russia because Russians are evil. Where did I hear this before?

And every country could put up its own digital borde

Yeah! Isolationistic politics! Every nation cooking its own soup, military forces used to prevent people from crossing the border, military forces killing every hacker who attempts to cross the borders, etc

And as I said, it might not be 100% effective, but for all practical purposes, it would do the job of isolating a country to only the traffic they permitted.

Yeah. As if it was possible. There is NO way to control the traffic of a whole nation. It is too much traffic, too much data to even try to filter it. Echelon tried it, it didnt work. The only way would be to filter the complete traffic - which would be complete isolation.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The US theoretically could, though not as simply as you appear to imagine.

Not even theoretically.

"Oh", you might say. "We'll only close it to the undesirable traffic!" And you will identify and block that how, exactly, while letting the other stuff through?

Exactly.

And various countries have, for reasons I doubt either of us would agree with. Consider the controls imposed by some of the Islamic states.

Oh I guess some would agree.

There are all sorts of controls that might be imposed as "emergency measures" or "temporary controls". How likely are those controls to be lifted when the situation they were brought about to deal with no longer exists? Police agencies always want more power to fight crime. Think hard before you grant it, because you'll find it hard to take away again.

Agreed. Especially because all those police officers, bureucrats, etc with access to your sensitive data are humans - and are targets of e.g. corruption, mistakes, etc

Botnets, phishes, spam, DDOS attacks -- yep, they're all problems. But none of them have affected me enough to have me calling for putting out the barricades, without carefully vetting what the barricades are and who controls them.

I agree.

Originally Posted by tompe

That is not the reason I have heard from people. What people are afraid of is misuse of the power and false positives. The equivalent to getting on a no-fly list because your name is similar to another name will be very common the more government listen to people.

Correct.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Actually, with better security systems, being put on a no-fly list because of something so random as a similar name should happen less and less.

Wrong. So far we have only seen an increase in the anmount of false-positives and more impact from each false positive.

No doubt, false-positives suck, especially when you're the false positive. On the other hand, I'd rather be caught as a false-positive than be on the plane that went down because no one caught the true positive.

Yeah. All human rights and rights of a citizen gone, douzens of people arrested without reason or even killed - for the potential of e.g. denying a single attack? An attack that could happen even with those new laws?

But are we getting slightly here, debating terrorist security when the issue is protecting copyright concerns? Or are we just over-reacting a bit, seeing conspiracies around every corner?

Some people here have e.g. said that controlling the internet, censoring the internet, attaching security everywhere, etc would be nice ways of ensuring copyrights.
They would not.

As Dennis pointed out, the government isn't concerned with little guys like us.

You sure? You did have a look at e.g. Guantanamo and people arrested wrongly? Just as a single example. And you be sure that the government wont make any mistakes?

They are also not so efficient as to be able to turn this extra scrutiny against us without our knowing about it. And don't forget, the government isn't a system... it's made up of people like us, doing a job.

Correct. Doing mistakes, etc

Anyway, I don't challenge the fact that increased security/scrutiny requires increased care and oversight.

Which cant be guaranteed.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Okay, I get you. But systems can be secured, if it is deemed worthwhile. Ask anyone in banking how easy it is to violate their systems and steal someone's money from the inside. They'll tell you they'd have better success robbing a convenience store with a toy gun.

No. No system can ever be secure. There is no security. And believe me: stealing from a bank is not that hard. Especially not if you work for a bank. Examples have already been given.
There is NO absolute security, there can never be absolute security and longing for it can only destroy freedom and live.
A friend of mine works as "white hacker". That means: He hacks computer systems for a living, testing the security measures. So far he hasnt found a single computer system that was safe. And yes, he has tested some that should be.
Not a single one - that means: Those government systems that save all your nice data - the data you want to get saved - arent save as well. Examples of data loss from government systems are more then common - e.g. through technical problems or human mistakes like letting a notebook lie in the train, etc

@DMcCunney: I agree to your last two posts.