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Cyphernomicon 11.15

Surveillance, Privacy, And Intelligence Agencies:
Records of all UseNet postings


  11.15.1. (ditto for CompuServe, GEnie, etc.) will exist
  11.15.2. "What kinds of monitoring of the Net is possible?"
           - Archives of all Usenet traffic. This is already done by
              commercial CD-ROm suppliers, and others, so this would be
              trivial for various agencies.
           - Mail archives. More problematic, as mail is ostensibly not
              public. But mail passes through many sites, usually in
              unencrypted form.
           - Traffic analysis. Connections monitored. Telnet, ftp, e-
              mail, Mosaid, and other connections.
           - Filtered scans of traffic, with keyword-matched text stored
              in archives.
  11.15.3. Records: note that private companies can do the same thing,
            except that various "right to privacy" laws may try to
            interfere with this
           - which causes its own constitutional privacy problems, of
              course
  11.15.4. "How can you expect that something you sent on the UseNet to
            several thousand sites will not be potentially held against
            you? You gave up any pretense of privacy when you broadcast
            your opinions-and even detailed declarations of your
            activities-to an audience of millions. Did you really think
            that these public messages weren't being filed away? Any
            private citizen would find it almost straightforward to sort
            a measly several megabytes a day by keywords, names of
            posters, etc." [I'm not sure if I wrote this, or if someone
            else who I forgot to make a note of did]
  11.15.5. this issue is already coming up: a gay programmer who was
            laid-off discussed his rage on one of the gay boards and said
            he was thinking of turning in his former employer for
            widespread copying of Autocad software...an Autodesk employee
            answered him with "You just did!"
  11.15.6. corporations may use GREP and On Location-like tools to
            search public nets for any discussion of themselves or their
            products
           - by big mouth employees, by disgruntled customers, by known
              critics, etc.
           - even positive remarks that may be used in advertising
              (subject to various laws)
  11.15.7. the 100% traceability of public postings to UseNet and other
            bulletin boards is very stifling to free expression and
            becomes one of the main justifications for the use of
            anonymous (or pseudononymous) boards and nets
           - there may be calls for laws against such compilation, as
              with the British data laws, but basically there is little
              that can be done when postings go to tens of thousands of
              machines and are archived in perpetuity by many of these
              nodes and by thousands of readers
           - readers who may incorporate the material into their own
              postings, etc. (hence the absurdity of the British law)


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