Hi everyone,
This has got to be a hoax. I believe this for several reasons, but the
biggest one is that email and email lists are the biggest information
collection windfall for the government since telephones, and I don't mean
maybe. There is no way, NO WAY, mail lists will be banned or anything else,
a major source of human intelligence collection (HUMINT)would effectively be
squashed. What does happen is that believe it or not, every email sent in
"plain" is monitored and distilled into trend tables, so Uncle Sugar is up
on not only people are saying, but how they are saying it, and who they are
saying it to. Email provides access to the public's pulse like no other
media. Even if you encrypt your email, you still are giving up trend
information to whom you are encrypting and that is another aspect of HUMINT
with a splash of COMMINT (communications intelligence). Even if you are a
security 5 percenter and use remailing, do you think for one minute the US
Government would say anything more than a token grumble if they had a way to
punch through the remailer and get the lists?
If you want to take a look at what a stooge looks like, look at Louis Freeh,
he rants and raves about personal encryption, it is something that could
really slow them down, but it would take nearly every emailer to use it
before you really would see any action from Capital Hill. It is misdirection
at its finest, the FBI can find out pertinent info in other ways, it just
constitutes an inconvenience for them, and they are crying about it.
I am not afraid to discuss this concept, it is freely available through the
Freedom of Information Act, the Government's angle on that is that there is
simply too much information to compile to make a lucid conclusion by any one
party. Hmmf.
These sorts of activity will always be with us, like bacteria I guess, our
government is a bit paranoid that way, and for the most part it's ok. The
feeling of safety in numbers with so much email flying around, however, is
simply baseless, to my knowledge, every stinking email is scanned by keyword
and content profile.
Welcome to the machine sports fans.
Bob
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 11:48:55 EDT