"Robin T Cox" <nomail@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:SDHrj.8903$zg.6601@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Sun, 10 Feb 2008 17:58:22 +0000, The Wizard of Oz wrote:
Robin T Cox wrote:
FBI sought approval to use spyware against terror suspects
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/08/fbi_spyware_ploy_app/
The FBI has reportedly sought the go-ahead to use a custom spyware
package to bug terrorists and other national security suspects.
Indirect evidence suggests that the request was likely to have been
approved.
However, would-be terrorists need only use Ubuntu Linux to avoid the
ploy. And even if they stuck with Windows their anti-virus software
might detect the malware.
A few months ago the American courts forced a guy running a
bittorrent
site to use Windows because the monitoring software used by the FBI
was
Windows only. That's one way to insure the OS market is locked up.
Later
Mike
No doubt terrorists and insurgents in the US will be amenable. But
that
still leaves the rest.
Using spyware against terror suspects seems innocuous and appropriate
enough, at first glance. However. I just Googled on 'Merton peace
terrorists' to find one of those things about slippery words, and the
slippery people who use them. It's about the Merton Center, a few
years back. It seems they were classified as terrorists, because they
were "...a left-wing organization advocating, among many political
causes, pacifism."
I think any discussion around Washington agencies using spyware
(and, I suspect, sporge flooding) wants to include the possibility that
maybe, just maybe, this Merton thing is the tiny tip of a very large
iceberg.
I propose that our government needs to retrieve some discarded
Constitutional concepts, such as ...probable cause? And to beware
its members who regard anyone who disagrees with them as people
to be only suppressed or destroyed.
Cheers, sort-of -- Martha Adams [cola 2008 Feb 10]
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