DoJ Mulls Tracking Picture Uploads

Dominus Suus passed us a link to a C|Net article about a disturbing threat to privacy from the Justice Department. According to the article, a private meeting was held Wednesday between Justice officials and telecom industry representatives. With individuals from companies such as AOL and Comcast looking on, the officials continued overtures to increase data retention by ISPs on American citizens. This week, they were specifically looking to have records kept of photo uploads. In this way, and 'in case police determine the content is illegal and choose to investigate,' an easy trail from A to Z will be available. The article provides a good deal of background on the Bush Administration's history with data retention, with ties to events even older than the Bush presidency. "The Justice Department's request for information about compliance costs echoes a decade-ago debate over wiretapping digital telephones, which led to the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. To reduce opposition by telephone companies, Congress set aside $500 million for reimbursement and the legislation easily cleared both chambers by voice votes. Once Internet providers come up with specific figures, privacy advocates worry, Congress will offer to write a generous check to cover all compliance costs and the process will repeat itself."

Republican Values

[Doc Ruby]

Republicans bring you smaller, less intrusive government.

Re:just the current move in a long game

[Aaron Isotton]

So, our elected officials go to Washington with the best of intentions, perhaps with a sincere desire to make the nation a better place ... and then they get within range of the D.C. distortion field. I believe that it's a lot like picking up a girl in a bar and going home with her. It all seems to make perfect sense at the time, but the next morning you wake up and go "Oh my God ... what have I done?"

This is ridiculous and doesn't make any sense. "Girl", "bar" and "morning" are not even words. I believe you wanted to say:

So, our elected officials go to Washington with the best of intentions, perhaps with a sincere desire to make the nation a better place ... and then they get within range of the D.C. distortion field. I believe that it's a lot like downloading a keygen from the internet and running it under your admin account on your main machine. It all seems to make perfect sense at the time, but after the next reboot you wake up and go "Oh my God ... what have I done?"

Re:How about SSL?

[Original Replica]

Yeah, no original thoughts! Where does that leave slashdot?