Posted on 08/20/2006 5:14:51 PM PDT by neverdem
Thanks to the U.S. Senate's remarkable but well-known lack of backbone, nations such as Albania, Croatia, Uganda and many others now will be able to call up the U.S. Justice Department and find out as much as they would like about anything you do with your computer.
At this point, you probably wonder why you haven't read about this. Frankly, there's not much reason you would have, unless you read some relatively obscure publications that focus mostly on technology issues. Another reason you wouldn't likely have heard of it is, of course, that most major media outlets ignored the issue entirely, largely due to how the Senate essentially trashed your online privacy -- by voice vote the night before heading home for another summer recess.
The issue at hand is the so-called Cybercrime Treaty, drafted by European bureaucrats and championed by the Bush administration. The treaty creates an international law enforcement mechanism for investigators in any signatory country to gain access to private information in another country (such as the United States). In essence, these other nations now can "borrow" law enforcement officers of another nation (again, most likely the U.S.), and use them to investigate any alleged crimes that involved somehow, at some point, using a computer.
For example, a cop in South Africa might be investigating an online poker site that has violated some obscure provisions of South African law. Let's then say you visited that same poker site, played a few hands with a South African national and logged out. Under this new treaty, the South African government can demand that U.S. federal agents visit your Internet Service Provider or ISP, demand from that ISP access about your online activities and turn that information over to the foreign government. Of course, this would all...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Bob Barr is a bigtime aCLU guy. That's as far as I got.
--b--
In my experience, most lawmakers voting on bills are blissfully and dangerously unaware of any possible negative consequences of the bill they're considering.
In my experience, most lawmakers voting on bills are blissfully and dangerously unaware of anything!
Bush must be smoking cheap dope! Is he supposed to be a conservative? Not any more!
Meanwhile the left continues to bitch about NSA wiretapping....
Lets say you are Mormon (Catholic, Jewish, Baptist) and in Saudi Aribia it is against the law to preach your religon to citizens of that country.
The Saudis (Muslems) could go to your ISP and ban your communication with an of their citizens. However, under U.S. law, our country can not make any law that affects religion.
I once considered setting up a scheme of proxy servers to deter anyone trying to worm their way into my computers.
But I believe AVG software and a good Firewall provide enough protection.
But I still worry about keyloggers and such breaking in. I started checking out keylogger detector software and in a trial run the first two products said I had one. But I thought they were probably just trying to scare me into buying their software.
If anyone knows of a 'clean' keylogger detector, please pass it on.
But I don't do anything wrong . So why should I care </sarc>
This is the extent of what Bob Barr does with the ACLU, from his website:
"He serves as the Chairman of Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances, and provides advice to several organizations, including consulting on privacy issues with the ACLU, serving as the Chair for Youth Leadership Training at the Leadership Institute in Arlington, Virginia, and as a member of The Constitution Project’s Initiative on Liberty and Security, based at Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute."
Internet makes the "rules" fairly nebulous, don't you agree?
I remember when the Patriot Act was being debated. The aCLU was trumpeting in the MSM that conservative Republicans were beating down their doors trying to join the aCLU. Bob Barr was the example they gave of their new conservative Republican members.
Wow, thanks. Let me not read the article then, I mean he is after all, a big aCLU type.
I don't think Barr's and Armey's fear is unwarranted. I think we're slouching toward a police/nanny state even faster with the war on terror. I shudder to think if the dems had these powers.
Some of the keywords are odd.
Why is it that when some people disagree with some guy, they accuse that guy of smoking something? Could be sort of telling about the accusee.
What is a keylogger?
What is a keylogger?
I shouldn't even comment after scrolling through this thread, but good Lord, this is more of the same sky is falling. BTW: I have nothing to hide.
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