We are all prostitutes

Speciaal voor de schijn-dissidenten van het CDA. 'We shall be hypocrites'.

Bush makes last-minute grab for civil liberties

'I'm still in the White House you know'
By Bill Ray → More by this author
Published Thursday 21st August 2008 16:15 GMT
Nail down your security priorities. Ask the experts and your peers at The Register Security Debate, September 24 2008.

US citizens could be investigated without just cause under a new plan from the Justice Department, while those who choose to leave the country will have their records kept for 15 years and available to any litigious attorney.

The Justice Department plan won't be unveiled in detail until next month, but the New York Times is reporting that the plan will to allow the FBI to open an investigation into anyone without clear suspicion, and that's got civil liberty groups understandably concerned.

Meanwhile the Department of Homeland Security has been quietly building a database of every border crossing by a US citizen, claims the Washington Post, and intends to hang onto the data for 15 years - foreigners will have their data stored for 75 years. All this information sits in a database which will be exempted from the 1974 Privacy Act, which would require individuals to be informed if lawmen request the data.

Both these moves are about solidifying temporary powers that were put into place following the terrorist attack in New York in September 2001, and doing so before Bush leaves office and is replaced by someone who may be less hard-line.

Details of the Justice Department plan were revealed in closed briefings to Congressional staff, and four Democratic senators have written to the Attorney General expressing their concern. The letter, signed by Russ Feingold, Richard J. Durbin, Edward M. Kennedy and Sheldon Whitehouse, claims the new plan "might permit an innocent American to be subjected to such intrusive surveillance based in part on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or on protected First Amendment activities".

As a result the Attorney has agreed not to sign the plan before Congress gets a proper look at it on September 17th.

The border-crossing database being created in the name of Homeland Security came to light last month in a Federal Register notice, and is intended to form a record which can "quite literally, help frontline officers to connect the dots", according to a Homeland Security spokesman.

But it won't just be terrorists who are tracked on the database. The information will be available to any court or attorney in civil litigation, or even the media: "When there exists a legitimate public interest in the disclosure of the information."

As a fully paid up member of the fourth estate The Register is looking forward to having access to US border crossing records, but we promise to only use the information in legitimate cases, so if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear from us. ®

German hackers poke hole in great firewall of China

A new Olympic sport
By John Leyden → More by this author
Published Thursday 7th August 2008 14:30 GMT
Nail down your security priorities. Ask the experts and your peers at The Register Security Debate, September 24 2008.

German hackers have constructed a route around the great firewall of China. The Chaos Computer Club said its technology will help athletes and journalists travelling to Beijing for the Olympic Games to circumvent censorship.

Visitors to China are being offered USB sticks containing a browser that connects via the TOR proxy network. These "Freedom Sticks", regular USB drives with pre-installed copies of the TorBrowser and Torprojects software, will only be available during the two-week period of the games. The Chaos Computer Club has also set up a dedicated micro-site that offers separate downloads of the software here.

In a parallel move, German digital rights activist group FoeBuD is offering similar "privacy dongles" through its web store for sale at €20.
TOR point

TOR is a worldwide network of servers, run by volunteers, that provides a means to anonymise data sent over the internet. Information sent over the network is encrypted and routed through different servers on the TOR network.

China uses a network of filtering and blocking technologies, mostly supplied by Western technology firms, to block access to sites about Falun Gong, reports of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and the Tibet independence movement. Until recently news reports on the BBC were also blocked.

Using proxies to get around these controls and browser sites isn't hard (at least for the tech-savvy) but maintaining anonymity is a problem, which is where the TorBrowser software and freedom sticks come in. Using the technology to send data out of China anonymously is another potentially useful application. The disadvantage of slower download speeds that come from using an anonymiser network is a minor drawback in comparison.

Chaos Computer Club is offering the technology partly to offer an easy way around Chinese censorship restriction but also to make a political point much closer to home.

Controversial new German laws on data retention may make it a criminal offence to operate TOR network nodes. The regulations are the subject of an appeal to the German Federal Constitutional Court.

"We are calling upon the German authorities to stop criminalizing the operators of servers of the TOR network. The behavior of the authorities is detrimental to the people in oppressive states, whose lives are at risk. China is only one of many examples", said Björn Pahls of the Chaos Computer Club. ®

Foppe overwoog boycot Spelen

[''Wat kan mij het schelen. Ik ga niet'', was Foppe's eerste reactie na het lezen van een artikel
over de mensenrechtensituatie in China.
NES - Foppe de Haan heeft in mei serieus overwogen de Olympische Spelen in Peking te boycotten. De bondscoach van de Nederlandse voetbalselectie liet dat woensdag weten in een interview in het Friesch Dagblad. ''Wat kan mij het schelen. Ik ga niet'', zei De Haan destijds na het lezen van een artikel in een landelijk dagblad over de mensenrechtensituatie in China.

In het betreffende artikel las De Haan dat China aan rassenvermenging doet om controle over de almaar groeiende bevolkingsgroepen te houden. Vruchtbare meisjes uit een deel dat grenst aan Rusland worden weggehaald en geruild met meisjes uit een centraal deel van het land. ''Dat is precies wat Hitler ook wilde'', aldus De Haan. ''Nederlanders vermengen met Polen en andersom. Hoe bestaat zoiets, vraag je jezelf af.'' (ANP)

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