On Thu, Dec 13, 2001 at 09:52:04AM +0000, Mark Evans wrote:
On Wed, Dec 12, 2001 at 07:57:18AM +0000, Damian Counsell wrote:
The law has historically been imposed as a means to protect property and of course the more property you've got the more influence you have in shaping what becomes law.
No problem with that.
Now it seems that the intelligence services have made a grab for more law, not because they're interested in paedophiles, terrorists are drug smugglers, but because they're interested in grabbing intellectual property and more `jobs for the boys'.
Yeah, right, and the Jews were responsible for blowing up the twin towers. I'm very cynical about the authorities's motivations, but "grabbing intellectual property"? That's just tosh.
The security services are in up to their knecks when it comes to grabbing sensitive commercial information and also preventing it from being grabbed. It's why the French are keen on introducing Linux - as
Unfortunatly they appear somewhat less good at tracking down organised crime and terrorists. Which is ment to be their real job in the first place.
I don't know if they have a real job - they seem to put their hands to anything whether it's commercial espionage or knocking off inconvenient princesses. The problem is that they're pretty much unaccountable to anyone & whether they actually do any good is debatable to say the least.
there's less possibility of the US making use of the numerous backdoors littering MS products to steal their firms commercial secrets.
Though I doubt the "backdoors" were specifically put in for that purpose. Most of them appear to be due to a design which enables "features" which are rarely used by default...
I would be staggered if the supplier of a pervasive OS didn't work with the security services in order to put backdoors in their products. It's just too good an opportunity to miss and I can't believe that they'd be so negligent as to not do it. Certainly the 'phone home features of XP must be a real bonus for them.
I've heard so many daft conspiracy theories since 9/11 (as the Americans refer to it) that I'm thinking of writing a book. The slack security that led to the incident itself is support for the cock-up theory of disaster more than anything else.
Most of the conspiracy theories are rot. Plenty of people hate the US - the only surprising thing was that it hadn't happened earlier.
It did, but skyscrapers tend to handle truck bombs in basement carparks quite well.
I forgot about that! Jet fuel seemed to do the job though. BTW, why didn't anybody in New York fire dept know that an intense fire would weaken a steel framed building to the point of collapse? Do they not employ a structural engineer? Heroes? Clueless bozos seems a more apt description.
More to the point most of the proposed anti-terrorist measures best at worst be a minor inconvenice.
That's right. A minor inconvenience to everybody going around their lawful business but no inconvenience at all to terrorists. The idea put around that they used cryptography is laughable. Any fool knows that if you're up to no good then you pre-arrange codewords in person beforehand ie. `We're organising a big party for Sept 11th do make sure you can make it.' or use dead letter drops and the like. I saw `Panorama' last night and they were still peddling the cryptography myth. BTW, I don't think the US fully realises yet that there's a very real threat from within. Timothy McVeigh wasn't the only US citizen to be upset by the shameful torture and killing of the Waco folks by the government. Whilst they concentrate on us sinister foreigners they don't realise that they're being undermined from within. When you've got a prison population in excess of 2 million (mainly black & denied a vote), a large underclass living in poverty (mainly black again) and people denied basic healthcare, then something is going to eventually give.
Subsequent proposals for new powers are just panicky efforts by incompetents at stable-door shutting.
No, they're not that incompetent. It's a power grab under a pretence - pure & simple.
Most of the proposed ideas have been around for a long time, hence the conspiracy theories. (As well as having little to no relevance to "horses" or "stables".) But would you really expect the US (and for that matter the UK) governments to come clean and say "yes we have interfered with the functioning of other governments, including supporting dictators who were favourable to our business interests".
Of course they can't. If people knew what was really going on they'd be horrified and then the Western governments would have to change. Fortunately for them, they largely control the minds of their populace. They've used Pavlov's findings to their full extent when it comes to managing their recalcitrant populations and Mein Kampf must be required reading for them. I noted that the NATO goon who was put up to front their media efforts with regards bombing Yugoslavia had a Phd in propaganda so he would have certainly read Pavlov and Hitler. Hence people actually still believe all the genocide nonsense spouted forth. One of the newspapers even updated the bayonetting and raping of nuns propaganda story that appeared in the papers here during the First World War and described in Robert Graves' `Goodbye to All That'!
(Let alone seek new policies to both clean up the mess which has been created in the last 50 or so years or attempt to prevent the same thing happening in future.)
Maybe that's why the US government has a problem with effectivly punishing Microsoft. It sees something of itself in the way Microsoft does business.
I think the primary reason for not controlling MS is economic. If they allowed competition and hence encouraged open source software then their economy would be damaged immensely. If they allowed an open system such as Linux to get a foothold on the desktop then foreigners will get a look in. ATM all the big software houses are Yankee and they want to keep it that way. After all, they don't want to create an even bigger disenfranchised underclass with the economic damage that would be wrought by punishing MS properly - that's just asking for trouble. I should think the NSA/CIA also quite likes the idea of a closed system produced by an American company on every foreigner's desktop.
We live in a democracy and the government pays most attention to the Daily Mail-reading voting bloc that is most likely to put a cross in the box.
If you think we live in some sort of democratic paradise where politicians listen to us then you're astoundingly naive. The Daily Mail and the rest of the Fleet St rags might aswell be written by 10 Downing St along with the BBC news etc. At least one Fleet St editor is
The BBC is (marginally) better than some. Though the UK media does generally appear to be a little more impartial and cynical than that in the US...
BBC domestic news is trash IMO, very often they can't even get the basic facts right or use the English language correctly. The World Service on the other hand is worth listening to. After all they can't lie to foreigners who are on the ground and who know what's actually happening there. As for Fleet St, the only one worth reading is the FT - follow the money and you can then put the pieces together & work out what's actually going on for yourself. The American tv media is a complete waste of time as you imply. Foreign stories aren't reported to any extent and when they are only in the most stilted fashion ie. Johnny Foreigner bad, American heroes good. They concentrate on domestic issues pretty much exclusively ie. 6 months of speculation/`analysis' masquerading as news about whether Clinton had sex in the Oval office....well who cares? Probably not even Hilary. Hollywood is complete racist drivel obsessed with violence and sex and their films should be banned or at least restricted over here as in France. I say lets have more French films! At least their actresses are desirable which is more than can be said for most of the Hollywood actresses, and the plots of their films revolve around human issues rather than special effects & ludicrous plots......marvellous!... < Sorry...beginning to drivel on like Ron Manager...:> I've no idea about their newspapers.
known to be an MI5 man.
Increases in security powers are meant to please the "something-must-be-done" brigade and not the sorts of thoughtful iconoclasts who read this list ;-). They are very little to do with "intellectual property" or, indeed, "jobs for the boys"---about which most individual MI6 employees probably couldn't give a toss. (I told you I was cynical.)
It's not meant to please the "something-must-be-done" brigade. It's
In a sense it is both, since it gives the illusion of those in authority doing something to address the "problem".
That's right. It's completely self-serving in that they define the `problem' and then supposedly `cure' it. The politicians create the "something-must-be-done" brigade themselves so they can push their own hidden agenda.
presented to us as meeting the publics demands for security as evidenced by the stories in the Daily Mail etc `reflecting public concern'. Only the terminally stupid give a damn about terrorists, paedophiles and the rest of the media created monsters lurking on the
As opposed to the media created monster of gangs of thugs terrorising housing estates...
A tried & tested propaganda technique is to keep the populace in perpetual fear - it's well known that this makes them more susceptible to brainwashing techniques. This is detailed in `Brave New World - Revisited' where Huxley mentions Mein Kampf as the seminal work on using it, and of course was described in Orwell's `1984'. Most people nowadays wont let their kids out of the house for fear of them being molested, killed etc. But the fact is that the likelihood of this happening is no more than it was 50 yrs ago but if you read the papers you'd think it was happening on every street corner every day of the week. Keeping them inside also has the handy side-effect of getting them to watch more of the crap on the TV that they pump out - crap about child molesters, killers, terrorists, cannibals, assorted sex maniacs & dope fiends on the loose, evil foreigners raping nuns and American heroes saving the world, all courtesy of Hollywood. Sling the telly out & break this not so virtuous cycle is what I say. People have to start thinking for themselves rather than being told what to think - and by Americans of all people. Anyway, the point of this posting (if there is any..) is to point out that the political system over here is pretty much as corrupt as the American system, after all we've got a `special' (dog/lamp-post) relationship with the Americans and if they've decided to go lightly on MS then they will over here too. This seems to be the case when you look at the OFT's response to Michael's letter. I don't think they'll do the same in Europe though. The French for starters are fairly fiercely independent & they're obviously not happy with an American monopoly being pushed down their throats & threatening their national security & industry. Nobody within the EU takes much notice of Blair & what he thinks - he's rightfully seen as a Washington lackey & stooge. The French & Germans now run the EU by default. So I suggest that everybodys hopes of breaking the monopoly now lie within the EU and any activism with regards that and the patent/copyright stuff is best placed in that direction. -- Frank *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Boroughbridge. Tel: 01423 323019 --------- PGP keyID: 0xC0B341A3 *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* http://www.esperance-linux.co.uk/ A dead man cannot bite. -- Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey)