Congress Votes to Let Government Continue Email Spying

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,399
Sleep tight tonight knowing the government has your back….and your emails. The Senate voted on Friday to extend the FISA Amendments Act for an additional five years, effectively giving the government agencies like the NSA authorization to monitor American citizens.

Several former NSA whistleblowers have come out against FISA, claiming the government is essentially using it to create a vast database of American citizens' personal communications in the name of counter-terrorism.
Click to expand...
 
When our government is granted power to do something, its tough to take it back from them.
 
That is why I host my own private email server.....

Fuck Governments.....

Tons of monkey trying to get control on everything they see.
 
In what way are they spying, is it by sniffing ALL the internet (ex: carnivore), or are they specificity looking at major providers like hotmail? Just wondering since I run my own mail server and it's in Canada, so wondering whether or not I'm safe.

Somebody needs to make a game that has the theme of terrorism and government intelligence and uses the SMTP protocol. Would confuse the hell out of their systems. :D
 
Disclaimer: I don't care for the level of power we've given the government in the name of "security", but just an FYI: You can encrypt your email you know. Look it up if you are worried.
 
Monkey34 said:
You can encrypt your email you know. Look it up if you are worried.
Click to expand...

I'm not up on encryption technology so I have a question. Would it matter encrypting my email when I use Gmail for my email anyway? lol. :D

(isn't google spying on me already)
 
Great,they can all agree to keep spying on us,but can't agree on a "financial cliff" solution.
 
michael.pa2 said:
Great,they can all agree to keep spying on us,but can't agree on a "financial cliff" solution.
Click to expand...

lol that is pretty sad actually.

We can maybe send them subliminal messages through our emails to give them ideas.

"Hi bob, those are nice cat pictures.

Red

ps: stop spending so much money! No not you bob. Yes you, you know who you are!"
 
michael.pa2 said:
Great,they can all agree to keep spying on us,but can't agree on a "financial cliff" solution.
Click to expand...

Of course. Spying on people benefits all of them. Not agreeing on the fiscal cliff also benefits all of them. It's never about the good of the country, it's always about power and control.
 
I like how civil liberties are so "flexible" these days.

Good to know my own Government views me as a terrorist... :rolleyes:

While we all will be rolling off the fiscal cliff , we can add this continued violation of our privacy to the list.
 
I'd feel even safer if there were cameras installed in everyones home to monitor us and keep us safe.
 
At this point we are going to make the Germans look like the pioneers of Democracy.
 
Two-faced hypocrites.

When Bradley Manning does this to the government, he is tortured, abused, and locked away in jail by uniform-wearing cowards.

When the government does it to us, it is just business as usual.
 
Phoenix333 said:
Of course. Spying on people benefits all of them. Not agreeing on the fiscal cliff also benefits all of them. It's never about the good of the country, it's always about power and control.
Click to expand...

Exactly, if the situation gets bad, shares will drop on the news, those guys will be buying low priced stock like crazy and then selling it all a few weeks later after its sorted. Double your money for the new year.

When you have a few million sloshing around, bad news is good news.
 
Most of this has more to do with the fact that most people understand little to nothing about the internet, computers, or any kind of technology. Email is NOT and never has been "private". People should NOT be expecting "privacy" where email is concerned. Even without all this 'government' crap, too often I get emails showing up with simple google searches. It's time for people to wake up and smell the coffee. Running your own email server is just about the ONLY way to have any kind of privacy and even that is questionable. Before the whole smartphone craze, people used instant messengers....the text that went through those were not "private" either. Now we have smartphones where there is absolutely nothing that should be looked at as "private".

The bottom line:
Your using other peoples' computers to do all these things and many of those computers are owned/controlled/run by companies under government authority/FCC regulation.
 
Encrypt your emails.

Not that it will help, its the NSA that creates and approves the encryption standards we are allowed to use. A cipher stronger than what is available and able to decrypt such is not public and kept confidential. They probably have an algorithm that can break into all forms of PGP and S/MIME encryption, probably all confidential, and I know they can break into 3DES, so real great security there...

It goes much deeper than some law. What makes you think they weren't sniffing the net, before FISA? ECHELON is still around you know? Heres a funny quote thats a warning to citizens from 2001:

"In 2001 the Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System recommended to the European Parliament that citizens of member states routinely use cryptography in their communications to protect their privacy, because economic espionage with ECHELON has been conducted by the US intelligence agencies."

Here is that complete report:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides...ORT+A5-2001-0264+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN&language=EN

That was 2001. ECHELON is now a global program with the assistance of other intelligence agencies.
Laws.... haha.
 
prndll said:
The bottom line:
Your using other peoples' computers to do all these things and many of those computers are owned/controlled/run by companies under government authority/FCC regulation.
Click to expand...

The Internet itself is PUBLIC, created by the government & educational institutions, given to the public. I expect no privacy unless I take precautions to be private (and even then, it's not 100%).

You want privacy? Unplug from the public Internet and run your own fiber line from PC to PC.

I would like the government to not spy on my email, but guess what? It will happen regardless of if the bill passes or not. It will be spied on by scammers, FBI/NSA/CIA, Google, ISP's, etc.. Welcome to the Internet.

Kind of like going outside (that place where the sun lives) - have a discussion at the local pub. Mention a few questionable things. See who comes up to you to ask what's going on. You're in a public place, you need to watch what you say. Not exactly rocket science. You want privacy? Encryption, VPN's, etc..

TL;DR: The Internet is a public place, treat it as such.
 
Ur_Mom said:
The Internet itself is PUBLIC, created by the government & educational institutions, given to the public. I expect no privacy unless I take precautions to be private (and even then, it's not 100%).
Click to expand...

...and access to which is paid for by private citizens to private companies, hence creating a reasonable expectation of privacy.
 
Stiletto said:
...and access to which is paid for by private citizens to private companies, hence creating a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Click to expand...

Point taken. There should be some privacy there, but I really don't expect it. Unencrypted information is easy to obtain on the open internet. It's either public, or easy to monitor (by private users or government or ISP's). I've used tools at an ISP to watch my own traffic. I saw my emails, IM's and other information... It's not that difficult. You don't want that? Encrypt.

I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying people shouldn't expect that information to be completely private. Intercepting information someone along the line is fairly easy. You don't send private information on a post card where anyone along the way can read it. Even if you send it in an envelope, that's not going to stop someone from stealing it from the mailbox. Sensitive information is sent Fed Ex, signature required, tracked...

Sad this bill passed. I do wonder, though, how many people actually supported this bill (public people, not politicians) then went to bitch about Instagram? :)

My senator has been fighting these privacy issues for a while, every time they come up. I wrote him a thank you letter the other day. The government has no reason to spy and monitor it's own people like this. Maybe I should keep a bowel movement log (no pun intended) and mail that to them, just so they know when/where/how it all went.
 
Ur_Mom said:
I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying people shouldn't expect that information to be completely private. Intercepting information someone along the line is fairly easy. You don't send private information on a post card where anyone along the way can read it. Even if you send it in an envelope, that's not going to stop someone from stealing it from the mailbox. Sensitive information is sent Fed Ex, signature required, tracked...
Click to expand...

Well, of course, from a technical perspective, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, but that's more a result of the technology being flawed, rather than it being silly to expect your private activities to remain so as a matter of public accord.

From a governmental perspective as pertains to personal liberty, privacy should be guaranteed. That's what the job of the government is supposed to be: protecting the rights of the citizens to be secure in their papers and effects(the latter of which arguably includes the internet). So while from a technical standpoint you're right, the governmental perspective you're advancing sets a horrible precedent, basically saying "we should expect the government to watch everything we do". Not that I'm suggesting that you're saying that, but it is a case where slippery slope is not fallacious, particularly given the bevy of legislation lately that, for the most part thankfully, has been shot down.
 
Ok, so they can't get over the Fiscal Cliff, yet they have time to pass this shit.
 
The only priority any of them have is their own selfish acquisition of power and money (either side of the isle).
 
shansoft said:
That is why I host my own private email server.....

Fuck Governments.....

Tons of monkey trying to get control on everything they see.
Click to expand...

And just how does your private email server prevent the government from spying on your emails?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top