Use a Firewall, Go to Jail

[Energy84]

Goddamn lawmakers... Just check out this new bill that's in the works.
<a href="http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000336.html" target="_blank">From "Freedom-To-Tinker"</a>

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">
Use a Firewall, Go to Jail

The states of Massachusetts and Texas are preparing to consider bills that apparently are intended to extend the national Digital Millennium Copyright Act. (TX bill; MA bill) The bills are obviously related to each other somehow, since they are textually similar.

Here is one example of the far-reaching harmful effects of these bills. Both bills would flatly ban the possession, sale, or use of technologies that "conceal from a communication service provider ... the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication". Your ISP is a communcation service provider, so anything that concealed the origin or destination of any communication from your ISP would be illegal -- with no exceptions.

If you encrypt your email, you're in violation, because the "To" line of the email is concealed from your ISP by encryption. If you use a secure connection to pick up your email, you're in violation, because the "From" lines of the incoming emails are concealed from your ISP by the encrypted connection.

Worse yet, Network Address Translation (NAT), a technology widely used for enterprise security, operates by translating the "from" and "to" fields of Internet packets, thereby concealing the source or destination of each packet, and hence violating these bills. Most security "firewalls" use NAT, so if you use a firewall, you're in violation.

If you have a home DSL router, or if you use the "Internet Connection Sharing" feature of your favorite operating system product, you're in violation because these connection sharing technologies use NAT. Most operating system products (including every version of Windows introduced in the last five years, and virtually all versions of Linux) would also apparently be banned, because they support connection sharing via NAT.

And this is just one example of the problems with these bills. Yikes.

UPDATE (6:35 PM): It's worse than I thought. Similar bills are on the table in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alaska, Tennessee, and Colorado.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">Fight the power. Phone, e-mail and send letters to your local congressmen to scrap this bill. Don't let this get a foothold!

[darkdontay]

Just more ways for them to rape our rights away. They lost out on banning PGP so now they are trying to slowly steal away what they could not bolding take at first. Luckily it has not reached my state yet, but I fear if it takes off their it could easily spread through out the US.

Though the use of braod vauge interpretation can cause most laws to extend beyond their true means.

<small>[ March 28, 2003, 12:54 AM: Message edited by: darkdontay ]</small>

[mrloud]

I don't think that this legislation will affect NAT or any other type of firewall technology or even encrypting your emails. What you do on your own network is out of the scope of this legislation. All it says is that you are not allowed to use Unauthorised Acesses Devices"

"(2) "Unauthorized access device" means a device,
instrument, machine, electronic mechanism, equipment, software,
technology, transmission line, or connection that is manufactured,
distributed, advertised, offered for sale, or used for the purpose
of defeating or circumventing any technology, device, or software,
or any accessory, component, or part of those items used by a
communication service provider to protect the provider's
communication service from unauthorized access, acquisition,
decryption, interception, receipt, transmission, or
retransmission."

So really your not allowed to do anything that rips off your ISP or telco or screw around with their routers.

The bill also says this:

"A person commits an offense if the person intentionally
or knowingly manufactures, assembles, imports into the state,
exports out of the state, distributes, advertises, sells, or
leases, or offers for sale or lease:
(1) a communication device with an intent to:
(A) aid in the commission of an offense under
Section 31.12 or 31.13; or
(B) conceal from a communication service
provider, or from any lawful authority, the existence or place of
origin or destination of any communication;
(2) an unauthorized access device; or
(3) plans or instructions for assembling or
manufacturing a communication device or unauthorized access
device, with the knowledge that another person intends to use the
plans or instructions for an unlawful purpose "

This probably outlaws IP spoofing at worst in regard to the internet.

What I find far more disturbing is the bit about Thou Shalt Not conceal from a Service provider or any lawful authority the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication.

This means you aren't allowed to build your own data transmission network designed to conceal your communications from Big Brother. This could include any directional radio frequency communication, modulated laser transmission or burst radio transmission.

I am not a lawyer. This is all just my interpretation / opinion.

[Flake2m]

The ironic thing about this bill is that the government will be violating it aswell.
The military, CIA, NSA, FBI and police all need to use secure methods of communication and encryption for security reasons.

Also while this bill doesn't take into the rights of the user it also doesn't have any ideas about how someone can protect themselves from hackers, apart from not using the internet. A hacker can attack a computer in another state/country and because of this bill, the user will have no way to stop them unless they pull the plug on the connection.

There is no way in the world that this bill would pass the senate. Whoever wrote up this bill should be locked up in a 3x3x2 cell.

[shooter3]

This "Bill" is patently unconstitutional.

Mrloud; point 1. starts by saying;"A communication device.....". This grossly violates the first amendment. It will be overturned in court.

Legislators are always pulling this crap. The trouble is we won't know what they realy wan't for a couple years.

[Ezekiel Kane]

We down here in Texas have had a great time laughing our asses off at this proposition. We've collectively decided that no way in hell are they going to restrict us from using firewalls. There's absolutely no way I'm compromising my security because big brother says I have to. It's like that law on how flasks are illegal. Give me a fucking break.

[darkdontay]

Kind of nice to see our Gov't working against our whishes... Elected by the people for the people.... Wait thats not right, Con'ed the peolpe into office , now screwing the people.. Yeha thats it..

It is bougus it is just as nasty as the DMCA.. I will have to dig around and get a copy of that for you guys to look at..

[Ghostcustom 24]

This bill won't pass.

You must remember that there have been MANY very stupid and pointless bill introduced over the entire history of the United States and almost all have been killed or thrown out.

[chemwarrior]

It may not pass, but the gov might be able to find a way to convince the people that something, more freedom removing, is necessar since we dont want to have our firewalls banned.

[darkdontay]

It is all a big F-ing game... Oracle stock and other security companies losing money every one satisfied with Macaffee then Boom Hackers attacks everywhere [99'], CIA losing money Boom WTC bombed [93']... just waiting for some new hacking attack to happen so the masses of sheeple, just walk their asses to the slaughtering houses to have their rights stripped away. I wish it wish stuff like this was on a one2one basis..I would answer everything with "...Pry it from my cold dead hand".. though I'm sure for 12$ and hit of crack they could arrange that.

[Nihilist]

That thing won't pass too much unconstitutionalness, however THIS IS FUCKING SCARY http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

[darkdontay]

FUCK THAT SHIT!!


"TCPA / Palladium will also make it much harder for you to run unlicensed software. Pirate software can be detected and deleted REMOTELY "


"There is a downside too. There will be remote censorship: the mechanisms designed to delete pirated music under remote control may be used to delete documents that a court (or a software company) has decided are offensive - this could be anything from pornography to writings that criticise political leaders. Software companies can also make it harder for you to switch to their competitors' products; for example, Word could encrypt all your documents using keys that only Microsoft products have access to; this would mean that you could only read them using Microsoft products, not with any competing word processor. "



The shit just goes on and on..... Looks like I will son be making a that permenate jump over to a *nix flavour though I have seen many new up and coming Free OS'es and Private Hobby OS'es that should be able to handle nicely.....

Goodbye MicroCrap :mad:

[tmp]

If my memory serves me, I remember in the late 1980's or early 1990's that
some government asshole wanted to force all computers to have something
called a "Clipper Chip" which would enable all law enforcement agencies to
decrypt any information coming from the computer. I remember signing the
petition against it. So I'm probably on their shit list. Later on the FBI, that is
the Federal Bureau of Injustice, wanted phone companies to stop using digital
technologies because it was harder for them to wiretap. Don't you just feel
sorry for the whiny little shits ? Asshole politicians aren't any better. Some of
them actually thought these were good ideas. I guess I'm getting cynical in
my old age, especially about politicians. When they're running for office or
re-election they'll give us a blowjob. Once they're in office, they fuck us in the
ass. Lock up the bastards. They'll be happy in prison.

[YayItGoBoom!]

Whoops! There go more rights and privacies to the government and big corporations! Sure they mean well, but very VERY quickly, checking up for pirated software is going to turn into checking for pornography, is going to turn into directly beaming internet entries, addresses, and credit card numbers to MicroShit.

TC will also make it much harder for you to run unlicensed software. In the first version of TC, pirate software could be detected and deleted remotely. Since then, Microsoft has sometimes denied that it intended TC to do this, but at WEIS 2003 a senior Microsoft manager refused to deny that fighting piracy was a goal: `Helping people to run stolen software just isn't our aim in life',
Not only that, they will have a financial handle on you. Basically a simple translation from Bullshit to English is: "Pay for upgrade 2245.00345, or else we'll turn off your Word documents and make them unreadable. If you really piss us off, well, we might just shut off all MSOFFICE programs, your favorite video games, kill your Ethernet software so you can't get on the internet (except for sending personal information back to MS). Hey, lets just shut down windows completely! No, better yet, lets change around their color schemes to Pink and Purple, and set their homepage to gay porn" Damn, I thought hackers were bad.

And what happens if it malfunctions? Everyone knows winshit doesn't work 100% of the time, more in the range of 40-60%. Lets say you have a perfectly law abiding citizen, who transfers a document from a floppy onto his TC PC. The document is fine, but1 bit incorrect causes Word to think that its pirated, and freezes Office.

Man I'm telling you, I get wearier and wearier every time I see an EULA.

[DimmuJesus]

This analogy/reference has been beaten to death, but it still stands true: IT'S 1984!!!