Might be leaving EF for good....

[Baby Gorilla]

It's not anything you guys have done....in fact, I won't be surprised if this place becomes a ghost town after it passes....

The Homeland Security Act is in Congress. If it passes as it stands now, all e-mail, all Internet traffic, all credit card purchases, all bank deposits, AND MUCH, MUCH MORE (I only state the most relevant ones here) will be recorded and go into a government database. This is Big Brother in action as we've never seen before. Your right of privacy WILL disappear.

You can e-mail anything you want or visit whatever site you want so long as you don't care if anyone knows about it. However, all these bits of data will come together to make a errie profile of who and what you are to the government. I really like this site. I've learned a lot, and I enjoy visiting, but I do have a public reputation to protect.

I don't even know how I'll be able to use the Internet if this passes. I can keep e-mail bland. I wouldn't trust encrypted e-mail only because I don't know how "secure" it will be after this law passes. I follow the presumption they have for promoting e-currency over cash--only a criminal would want money in a form that's not traceable. Likewise, only a criminal woud want his e-mail to be private.

I have a firewall program that can limit access into my system to only key IPs, but I'm still trying to figure out how that works. I do need the Internet for some of the paid work I do, so I can't just chuck it, and I'm sure this "law" (if it passes) will empower the government to invade your system while on-line without your knowledge.

If you want to try and prevent this, do as I have....contact your representatives and state senators. Urge them to vote against this. Some say if it passes, the Supreme Court will strike it down--however, it wouldn't be the first time those 9 justices have sided against the Constitution.

 

[mvmaxx]

Well, I don't think it's the end of the world because frankly they would never have enough resources to scan every e-mail on the Internet. It's a scare tactic. True they may gain some more authority with this bill but it gives us that much more reason to always use encrypted e-mail and be safe.

 

[MoreBeefPlease]

if that shit you say is true, your right about this site and the internet. along with the goverment stereotyping you.

 

[macrophage69alpha]

be assured the homeland security act will change little. If you think that you, or for that matter anyone here, are that important, you are deluding yourself. If you dont think that the government is already doing what the law will (conditionally) allow, then you are naive.

This is not meant as an attack, just a reality check. This board and basically most of what is discussed on all these forums is of little or no concern to the government. Two issues GHB and DNP (well ketamine too.. but that was less internet oriented) had a VERY SMALL bit of thier brief attention. And that was not homeland security oriented.

the internet will trundle along much as it always has, and the conspiracy theorists will cry the end is near.. who do you think is right?

If you think that the law will affect non terrorists, maybe, but when it does it will be curtailed. Enforcement expands and then inevitably contracts in the face of legal opposition.

 

[john937]

I work for a company designing servers.
Our servers improve at least 2X every year.
I'm also a database administrator, and I'm working on a project that allows remote databases to talk to each other.
Automated speech recognition programs are advancing at astronomical rates as well.
It's true, the current technology can't capture and make sense of everything today,
but we're not far off from being able to analyse this amount of data.

It's not so much that the government is going to be looking for everything on everybody.
The problem becomes if the government ever has a reason to focus it's eye on you.....

Look at the lady that got sent to jail for punishing her child in a parking lot (the cops called it abuse).
I'm sure when survalence cameras were installed, nobody intended for them to be used to intrude into a parents right to punish their kid.
No, they were installed to protect us against theives and muggers.
But once they're installed, and somebody sees something on the camera,
suddenly the tool gets used in a way nobody intended originally,
and at that point the cat is out of the bag, too late to stop it.