Chile Forum

Wasn't sure which thread to post this...but thought it might be of interest....
Chile is not even on the radar as far as electronic surveillance,according to them.
<LINK REMOVED BY ADMIN>

Dunno about that, there's a guy building an earthbag home way out in the Patagonia and we can watch him digging anytime!
Scratch that, you can watch him watching people dig...

Don't ever do that again, or I will ban you. Asking people open shady content from shady websites like that (even if it is not a link link), with under 10 post will get you banned.

Now, I did look at the document and I did not see Chile on the list anyway. So what was the point?

Second, who the hell is that web site? They are some company selling trash encryption solutions by pumping paranoia. Not exactly an authority site on computer security threats, or government eves dropping anywhere let alone in Chile. Not exactly who I would be shopping for personal encryption solutions from.

I am sure the military and police in Chile (hi guys) like every military in the World does electronic eavesdropping (in fact I know they do, because my wife use to work with them). I would be a little concerned about one that does not. I am also certain their budget and sophistication is sufficiently limited and focused in the big picture of global government surveillance to be certain that Chile is not even making the bottom of the "to be concerned about" list amongst government surveillance programs. Chile lacks the broad IT base of real hackers (yea there are some good ones I am sure out there) and the budget to dedicate big IT resources to entire server farms across multiple government agencies to watching every thing you type. There is just no political priority to it in the country, and I am even on the side of concerned about the lack of priority it is given in Chile.

I can likly come up with 25 countries right off the top of my head that have way more surveillance resources that are far superior to Chile's in almost every way (Hell, most medium to large international corporations have more surveillance resources). In fact, I can easily come up with 25 countries with annual budget of electronic surveillance resources larger than likly what Chile's entire government spends on all IT resources (laptops, cell phones, cameras to full blown servers).

Let's see:
U.S. (obviously)
Canada
Every COUNTRY IN EUROPE (I think that is 25 right there)
The EU collectively (does that count as a country)
China (they got more cyber police than Chile has people)
Israel (they likly spent more than all of Latin America combined)
Japan
Korea
Russia
Iran ( all of the Muslim countries with electricity have serious electronic surveillance programs, so there is another 25)
India
Australia
In the neighborhood Brazil and Argentina are very well known.
Sure I missed at least another 25 that beat Chile by a long shot.

You see my point? There is no way that Chile would make any serious top 25 list, by anyone that had a clue about government electronic surveillance or computer security. Even at that, I do have a bit more faith in the Chilean government than any of above named organizations to keep it focused on things that it should be.

I had to block half the countries in the list above because of ongoing constant attacks on our networks. The number of attacks I get on our servers a day range from the hundreds a day to the thousands most likly (most of it I just consider normal internet static, but they are attacks), and we are really nothing special out on the internet. That is just how the internet is now. I had to block them because I was waisting too many computer resources just logging and defending against them.

I don't think most average users of the internet even today really appreciate the very very serious cyber war(s) and battles going on day in and day out all across the internet. On corporate networks, your windows computer when it is sitting idle, your bank server, your cell phone. You see some increasing hyped up headlines in the newspapers headlines about "government boogie man surveillance", but that does not really tell you 1% of what is really going on out there. Honestly I think governments are so far behind the ball, even the big ones (in most departments anyway) are almost always playing catchup. Governments organizations, even military ones, are often way too slow to really adapt to it. It is the private none governmental or government "encouraged" type organizations that are really doing the surveillance and are the scary threat.

Charles, I pretty much agree with all you're saying except governments being behind. Some, OK maybe. But Uncle Sugar? Ft. Meade? C'mon now. They literally have ACRES of advanced computers there and the most sophisticated listening devices as well. All courtesy of US tax payers, so you know that no expense was spared. Ain't it great spending other peoples money? Check out The Puzzle Palace by James Bamford for info.

yea, but when some kids in his basement in the U.K. or a couple thugs in a basement in Moscow can turn their big expensive toys in to spaghetti from the other side of the Earth, you kind of got to wonder just how efficiently they are using them for spying on Mr. Joe Blow. In fact, they are likly spending time and money spying on old Joe Blow 1) because it is easy 2) because it looks good on the budget report for next year 3) they really have a hard time getting any useful information on Mr. hacker that would be good on budget report.

Mostly it is the shear information processing white noise problem. Big machines do not really make for efficient machines, or more importantly useful information.

Hypothetical sample lines in black book Congressional budget reports:

In 2009, we identified and conducted surveillance on 500 million active targets threating the United States around the World, and 350 million were confirmed to be within our boarders and are deemed to be composed mostly of domestic and foreign terrorist. Please double our budget so we can continue to do good work.

VS.

In 2009, we identified and conducted surveillance on 3,000,000 active targets threating the United States around the World with high levels of techinical skill and sophistication. Unfortunately they hung up on us before we could obtain any useful information because we need budgetary approval and authorization from the State department, the CIA, the Pentagon, the office of obscure authorization of authorizations, had to double check with 200 other government branches to make sure it was not one of us, and then 100 allies to make sure it was not them. We are still waiting for proper clearance to know if we are authorized to be authorized. So, really we only managed to identify a few thousand. Turns out they are all just a bunch of bot nets in China, but when water-boarded at Guantanamo easily gave up numerous sources of cheap Viagra. Please double our budget so we can continue to waist gobs of money on the Total DISINFORMATION AWARENESS SYSTEM. Thank you.

I am very sorry;I truly had no idea.
To the admin:
I found this link on another blog I visited;and that was my point-that Chile was not listed,which means it is a good country for individual privacy at this point. I was not meaning anything beyond this-but sharing a piece of information that seemed like it might be of interest to people on this forum-I have seen people discuss trends and situations in the UK/USA,etc. and comparisons with Chile.

Obviously,just b/c I posted a link to this report,does not mean I personally endorse or even know about the company and their product. I am pretty tech ignorant,hence my posting a link that apparently is not kosher. Really,I was just sharing this information,nothing to do with the company,etc. Just starting a topic of discussion.

That said,don't threaten me.
Happily,remove me or ban me or whatever from your forum.
I appreciate the resource you have created for decent individuals with families,such as myself,who happen to have stumbled upon it in our interest of Chile and visiting/perhaps living.

But it's not really that special that I need someone threatening to kill me.
WHAT???!!!!

I know I should not take it personally b/c it's just a website forum,but honestly,very upsetting to click on the one thread I started to see the discussion,and geesh. I understand there's some spam out there,but don't presume guilt,thanks.

Also,I am sure you are busy,but if you took the time to see what other posts I've contributed on other threads,you would probably have sumised that my 'error' was unintentional.

Again,sorry. And goodbye.

I am the OP. Just to make it absolutely clear,my intention,for all reading this,in posting this topic/link was in support of the fact that Chile is not listed as a country. I have heard Chile openly touted as an excellent place to be an entrepreneur,have individual rights and in general live with less govmt involvement. In fact,I was just reading another thread about lax building in Chile,and lack of tools for builders-and one suggestion was regulation for the industry with an acknolwedgement that this would require more bureaucracy.

You take the good with the bad,obviously. And this is why I was using this forum-to get information from people who have it,as far as what it's actually like to live in Chile. You hear suggestions,and then you read up on them to get a better feel for things. (And bureaucracy is not the same as electronic surveillance,anyway. But case in point,there's often a trade off as far as certain aspects of living,it seems.)

Sorry if I mislead or misrepresented with what I posted. I don't have first hand experience with Chile,and am sincerely interested,not just someone amusing myself or trying to make people open links to bad websites. There ARE some people like myself still out there on planet earth;I think it's unwise to assume spammers and trolls or infer that everyone posting a thread is insinuating that Chile is 'bad'. My post was to the contrary-isn't it great that Chile is not listed,but Argentina,brasil and others are on the list? Obv.,Chile is still a great place to live without constant surveillance,according to that one particular report and a few rumors I'd heard.

Other threads on this forum have indicated that personal rights are important to people as a topic of discussion,and more than one person has talked about interest in chile in contrast to uk or usa. So,I thought I would get some direct feedback on the subject-not on whether or not this particular forum is monitored,but whether or not people have more or less liberty when it comes to living in chile,relatively speaking,of course.

I am not longer interested in getting that feedback via this forum,but wanted to explain my post more clearly.
Thanks.

irm,

Like you said yourself, you shouldn't take it personally and I cannot imagine Admin was threatening to kill you

Never forget though that everything in Chile can be tracked via your mandatory national ID card and that there are both entry and exit Immigration checkpoints.

That said, Admin is correct on how uncoordinated and unorganized Chile is on the electronic side of the equation on this issue.

And I too trust that the system will not be massively abused just because of the memory of what happened a few decades back.

Yes, the lack of regulation cuts both ways and I know individuals who have benefitted from the lack of attention that a small operator gets when the reg agencies are too busy going after the good for publicity mass media attention targets and big peso coups.

No one threatened to kill you. I threaten to ban you. That is not even a metaphorical death on the internet, let alone anywhere else.

Irony of all this is rather funny, once you understand why we have it. You posted a pdf document to a shady security web site, which is exactly what the ten post rule is suppose to stop as the primary objective (i.e. potential links to virus infected, insecure content, and /or sites that could facilitate violating privacy on the internet ). It is designed to stop not just annoying spam, but more importantly outright dangerous spam links.

Let me put it another way. It is like you walked up to a group of people at night, hung out for a few mins, and then tried to convince a few to go down one of the dark alleys of the internet with them before they knew who you are. You see how that looks suspicious?

Now from time to time people do get caught up that simply don't understand the reason for this rule being in existence, and have never seen forums that enforce such rules (they are relatively common in IT computer circles). Thus, I did give you the benefit of the doubt by not outright banning you at that point based on your previous few posts that seemed to be honest contributions to the forum. We do however get spammers that come in and do manage to make a few real looking posts before putting something like that up.

Now if you had history of say 50 or 100 posts and posted something like that, no one on the forum would think twice about it; but that is why all new members up until about 20-30 posts are kept on probation to guard against exactly what you did. Had you accidentally posted something like that later with a long history of posts and involvement on the community even if in fact it was dangerous, I would have likly just clipped the link after checking it and never gave any thought to your potential motives in particular other than it was a mistake.