American Death

Sunder sunder at sunder.net
Wed Apr 4 09:43:04 PDT 2001


Anonymous wrote:
> 
> "American Life Project" needs killing.
> 
> Americans Support Email Monitoring, Study Finds
> 
> WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A survey released Monday finds Americans are
> worried about criminal activity on the Internet and willing to let law
> enforcement agencies intercept suspects' email despite misgivings about
> privacy protections.

http://63.210.24.35/reports/pdfs/PIP_Crime_questionnaire.pdf

Yeah, sounds like FUD to me.  To clarify, it sounds like the FUD campaign
is working, or the people polled were all moutpieces of El Federale.

It's interesting to see how people react to this.  Question "CAR9" for
example shows what internet crimes they are most concerned about.

The top five were kiddy porn, credit card theft, organized terrorism,
viruses, hacking into government networks.

Funny that, if you look at the hype and FUD reports about the internet,
it's similar to how much airtime is given to each of these horsemen.

I know very little about kiddy porn, but my uneducated guess is that that
perhaps less than 0.001% of the population of the US views it, and that
less than 0.00001% is engaged in its creation.  Yet it's the number one
fear.

I could understand credit card fraud being in first place, but kiddy 
porn?

Next comes terrorism, as if terrorists weren't already organized.  I
would say anyone with half a brain would easily conclude that in order
for terrorists (note plural) to engage in terrorism, that they would
have to be organized.  Since the specter of terrorism was raised much
earlier than the specter of terrorists using the internet for their
planning, one would easily conclude that they can organize themselves
with or without the internet.  Duh!

Note the question of the fith one says "computer hacking into government
networks, web sites and files."  How does one hack into a "file?"  Never
mind the BS, but look how it's worded.  It's not "computer hacking," nor
is it "computer hacking into web sites," but rather into government
networks.   Vewwy interesting.  Gee, I wonder what government mouth
piece created this survey?

If you go down the list, only 1% were worried about hacking into
business web sites rather than the 5% that were worried about hacking
into government sites.

Interesting distinction.

No, I can't agree fully with Steve Thomson's representation of:

>         "Do you have concerns about rapists, terrorists, drug-dealers and
>         other criminals stalking you and yours through the Internet?"

But it's quite close.

Supposedly this was done by a random telephone sampling.  If that is truly
an honest survey and if one is to assume the questions weren't leading,
which from my quick glance says they are, then this survey does nothing
more than convey the fact that 80% of us Americans are nothing more than
sheeple agreeing with what TV feeds us.  Sigh...

The interesting question whose result wasn't pushed on CNN and other web sites
was CAR1 which shows the majority don't trust the government to do what is 
right.  So they're not fully asleep, just gullible.

But CAR4 shows that the majority thinks new laws are needed - the very
evil that keeps Congress in business pushing draconian invasive laws into
our lives, and they approve of spying on phone calls, emails, and snail
mail.

A huge majority don't have a flying fuck of a clue about what carnivore
is.

45% picked "carnivore is good because it will allow the FBI to
track down criminals" and another 45% picked "carnivore is bad
because it can be used to read emails of ordinary citizens"
Sounds to me like they were tossing a coin due to about 80% of
them not knowing what it was.  Well at least 45% of sheeple value
their privacy to some extent, but that doesn't explain the ~60%
who want monitoring of emails, phone calls, and snail mail.


Few surprises here.  What they hear on TV is what they think.

Baaaa...

-- 
----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :Surveillance cameras|Passwords are like underwear. You don't /|\
  \|/  :aren't security.  A |share them, you don't hang them on your/\|/\
<--*-->:camera won't stop a |monitor, or under your keyboard, you   \/|\/
  /|\  :masked killer, but  |don't email them, or put them on a web  \|/
 + v + :will violate privacy|site, and you must change them very often.
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------





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