Not "illegal", just "incompatible"
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Bob_Robertson Aug 28, 2007 11:47 AM EDT |
I think it's far more likely that F/OSS will not become illegal itself, but that through corruption and "terrorist" FUD on a national scale, "Trusted Computing" will become the norm, and without closed "trusted" binaries and closed "trusted" ROMs a-la Tivo, "we" will not be allowed to participate. While _technically_ this is certainly far-fetched and paranoid, I recall how many people thought it was insane when all telephone systems in and through America were legally required to be remotely tapable from Ft. Mead. Yet it has been up and working for a decade, as we know by the "uproar" when someone finally documented that AT&T's entire internet backbone traffic was being mirrored back to the Fed.Gov. Well yea, they _have_ to. It's the law. |
| Sander_Marechal Aug 28, 2007 12:20 PM EDT |
Nice post, up to this bit:Quoting:Well yea, they _have_ to. It's the law. No.They have to be able to, in case some G-man shows up carrying a valid warrant for a few bits of the data. They are under no obligation to mirror all their traffic to the feds. |
| Bob_Robertson Aug 28, 2007 1:16 PM EDT |
I agree with your assertion that it certainly is against what most people think of as the "law", especially the 4th Amendment. What I was trying to say is that no one should have been surprised, since that capacity had to exist by law. But I am not going to say that there isn't some provision of the Patriot acts that weren't used to strong-arm AT&T into providing the feed, while a warrant would be issued later for anything found that might actually be put to use in court. I don't want to paint AT&T as good guys, but I don't also want to pretend they did it because they wanted to. I don't know. But I do know that those who were receiving that feed _want_ it. Badly. Badly enough to twist any law they want and get away with it. |
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