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 ...
AVG is excellent software; free, too! But you should update the virus definitions database at least once a week.
IMHO, a firewall that protects against just inbound threats, such as that built into Win XP SP2, is worthless as it does not protect against unwanted outbound traffic such as keyloggers calling home.
FWIW, I use the free(!) Kerio firewall. Excellent!
Short answer: Do a Google search on keylogger.
What a pointless comment.
It's software that can be installed remotely that will monitor and record all your keystrokes and then report to an external computer (transmits home) via the internet.
It's a very dangerous software in the sense that someone could obtain all your private information including passwords just by recording your keyboard strokes.
Thank you! I will try Kerio at once.
So technically, a foreign government could spy on any of us with no warrant, and then the US government could use the information, correct? A big sidestep around any Constitutional protection.
I don't know. I just get the impression that we bought this on the recommendation of the State Dept. to ingratiate ourselves with leftist, big brother types in the EU. Frist gets another demerit as majority leader, IMHO. I like the Barr's idea that the House should refuse to fund it.
BTW, from the comments on this thread, it doesn't seem that many care about their liberty too much, IMHO.
In my experience, most lawmakers voting on bills are blissfully and dangerously unaware of anything!
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If they were aware of anything they would have a great reluctance to pass a law of any kind except under extreme duress.
They'll all of the sudden discover they care if any branch of government goes to the dems.
You're welcome.
What anti-Spyware software are you running?
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