Senator Proposes to Monitor All P2P Traffic for Illegal Files 626
mytrip writes "Senator Joe Biden (D-Del) has proposed an ambitious plan, costing on the order of $1 billion, aimed at curtailing illegal activities via P2P networks. His plan involves utilizing new software to monitor peer-to-peer traffic on an ongoing basis. 'At an afternoon Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about child exploitation on the Internet, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it's "pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation" simply by looking at file names. He urged use of those techniques by investigators to help nab the most egregious offenders."
And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck them. Fuck them both.
And I'm sure . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
Tags (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in Delaware. (Score:1, Insightful)
Ananymous Coward (Score:1, Insightful)
I understand now (Score:3, Insightful)
They think the people that deal in them are as stupid as they themselves are.
What light through yonder window breaks? Tis the clarity of seeing people for what they truely are: idiots.
File names?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ponies, puppies, and pumpkin pie (R13 ;) (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:WHAT!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
This is because people are hardwired to organising their stuff. A filename by the name of "rapeMe" is far easier to find when you need id than the same file, but named "rU2:s" don't you think?
Now, since people are also lazy they forget to rename these files before transmiting them.
Sure, the method is not perfect and yes sooner or later filenames will be randomly generated when transmiting by P2P clients themselves, but until then the method provides a good guess as to who needs further inspection.
impossible w/o outlawing encryption (Score:3, Insightful)
If monitoring is heavy-handed AND encryption isn't illegal, it will be used.
The net effect: Wasted CPU time for encryption/decryption.
Re:Remember, Kids (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura? (Score:5, Insightful)
In any case, all the more reason to use the TOR network.
Keep the voters ignorant (Score:4, Insightful)
Distraction issues: file sharing, gay marriage, abortion, drugs, bosnian snipers
Biden's not Senator RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)
Totally different.
How 'bout some quid pro quo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ananymous Coward (Score:2, Insightful)
This reminds me of a dilbert cartoon (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Remember, Kids (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't believe me? Google for US federal deficit charts...
Re:And I'm sure . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone with his position should have enough intelligence to seek out smart people and see what can be done sensibly. Of course, all his intelligence is in his wallet; which is (un)fortunately under his ass most of the time.
It really is time to get rid of big business lobbyists. Their damage to the US is unfathomably huge. Time for open lobbying, not dissimilar to having to post your lobbying requests on the legislator's wiki site for all to see.
We need a LOT more transparency in the influences on legislators. Clearly.
This legislation is being promoted without clear evidence that it is needed. Where is the supporting evidence to show that this legislation will stop what it is intended to stop? How will it stop those from posting to the Internet from countries where the material is not illegal? There is no evidence to support it. If there is, the law is not needed. They can use the evidence they already have to arrest those guilty of the supposed crimes. Fucking idiots.
What an asshat. Yes, your child can click on the 'download britany spears' link and get childporn. Those filenames are ALWAYS accurate. Damn, even the **AA were using wrong filenames to spoil P2P sharing.
Re:Remember, Kids (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, republicans also suck for censorship (dems hate violence, repubs hate boobies), and they are far more likely to get "decency-style" laws passed, than infringe on individual liberty...If you can't buy booze on a Sunday in your state, somewhere, there is a Republican to thank.
Re:And I'm sure . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:File names?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tags (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura? (Score:4, Insightful)
Fuck them. Fuck them both.
Re:Remember, Kids (Score:5, Insightful)
Apologies for the slightly trollish nature of my post, but it's really pissing me off seeing this inane republican vs democrat stuff, it's like racism or something, except the fairly arbitrary divide being which set of self-important morons you vote for instead of place of birth/skin colour. Admittedly you do have a choice who to vote for, but in the end there are always gonna be problems no matter who you vote for, under the current system at least.
Re:And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does that quote suggest to you that he's technical enough to even know what a MAC address is, let alone know that it's spoofed with five seconds worth of work in the command prompt? People have of course screwed with filenames just to see what happens (much more in Kazaa/Limewire than Bit-torrent), probably to test Rule 34, with interesting results; more importantly, it shows that filenames are completely meaningless if you're looking to actually reveal content. In any case, just ticking the "encryption required" box in your torrent client solves that problem - and you can bet your ass that any sort of unique serial number would be the much more industry-standard (and equally absurd) IP address. You know - take the RIAA approach.
Don't buy a shovel just yet. (Score:2, Insightful)
Canada took a misguided right turn a few years ago and currently has a government in residence (albeit, thankfully, tenuously) that is nothing more than neocon-lite. We're still better off than you, but the current government likes nothing better than to oil the slippery slope and herd the Canadian sheeple in its direction on behalf of its big-business masters. One can keep hoping the people will wake up and smell the frog sweat, but Canadians tend to be too trusting and easy-going and thus ripe for abuse.
Re:And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WHAT!?! (Score:1, Insightful)
The file sharing service uses Slapstick_Family_Birthday.jpg while the consumer of the media renames it locally to Beat_the_Wife.jpg
I am certain the pedophiles already use code words to mean various things not obvious from the words themselves.
This is not a law proposal, just loose talk (Score:5, Insightful)
The payoff (Score:5, Insightful)
One billion dollars! (puts pinky to lower lip) I see the tip of an ice berg, but ok since ... "It's for the children"!
Ah! The rest of the iceberg! Now how will we pay for it? [slashdot.org]
No matter that it cannot possibly work, it is for the children you see. So naturally if it's not working, we'll simply need to provide a bit more funding in this year's budget, and the next, and the next...
Re:And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I'm not a republican OR a democrat because I enjoy the process of THINKING too much to give it up.
Both parties of this bi-partisan country are corrupt, lazy, money grubbing, fear mongers and I refuse to vote for another piece of deadwood until there are people put up for election that are WORTH VOTING FOR and not one minute sooner.
Re:WHAT!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's unfortunate that none of this Billion bucks they want to spend catching people who swap illegal porn will actually help any of the children who were abused and in reality, won't stop it from happening to other children. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I'm pretty sure this isn't it.
Re:WHAT!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
The Most Rickrolled Person In The World.
Re:The man's a genius! (Score:2, Insightful)
We need to demolish the two-party system (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder if anyone has a viable stratergy for getting more parties into the mix.
I feel a strong affiliation to the beer and cartoon party.
Re:File names?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot, Somersault, Open Source are all non privilidged S users.
$C0 is actually a special case in that they earn the $ priviledge AND get to replace the O with a zero for being so failing so miserably at it.
Re:And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura? (Score:3, Insightful)
The real old school Republicans are primarily the people who founded the Libertarian party when the Republicans turned down this road long long ago.
All the rest of them left the Republican party when that fascist monster Reagan was elected.
Ron Paul is a libertarian and has been for a long time.
He's nothing at all like a Republican as clearly demonstrated by the fact that he was never even close to becoming the Republican candidate.
Federalism (Score:3, Insightful)
What you want would just result in tyranny by the largest plurality.
Re:And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is also my disagreement with those supporting Ron Paul. Maybe he is the best candidate, and maybe everything would be better if he were elected, but he has literally no chance of becoming president, but a lot of his supporters talk of voting for him, instead of "throwing away your vote" on one of the 3 contenders.
So, voting for Ron Paul is not throwing away your vote, even though he can't win, and therefore, you still didn't vote for the winner of the election, and possibly helped one of the others get elected instead? I feel it necessary to vote for the lesser of 3 evils, at least so things can be BETTER than they are now. I would rather have my say in voting for someone who can win, than in voting for an ideal out of protest for the others.
It's sad, but these days more people need to vote AGAINST someone, than for someone. You don't want McCain to become president? Vote for the person running against him that can actually win. You don't like any of the three? Find the one you can deal with for the next four years and vote for that one.
Say my dream car was a really fast Ferrari, but I only had $5000 to spend and I don't have any current transportation. Should I put that money away and just wait until I had enough to buy it, (which may never happen), and not have any transportation? Or should I be more practical and find the best option available to me right now, so that I can drive to work, and get a better job that makes more money and maybe earn enough to buy the Ferrari?
It'd be great if I could have my ideal, but practicality limits reality.
Re:Remember, Kids (Score:3, Insightful)
The Republican party wants to take out a loan that will be paid for by the poor and/or young later (because they can't afford it now) and use it to protect the rich and/or old from the poor and/or young. They don't want to hear naughty words or see any sort of sexual content occur in public at all, both because they think their grandchildren might learn something bad from them and because they seem to offend easily.
Both sides share two common issues. They think the children need protection from everything, and seek to protect their interests from the other side 's interests at the other side's expense.
Incidentally, since libertarians get up a lot here I'll include them. The Libertarian party wants the government to get just enough money to carry out the most basic of functions such as protecting everyone in the country from nothing less than invaders and egregious crimes. They rely on each person's intelligent nature to recognize that it is in their own self-interest to stop trying to get someone else to pay for what that person wants. As evidenced by the two parties that are the the powerhouses of the nation, this is unlikely to ever get anywhere.
Re:Remember, Kids (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the US, and most other "democracies" are representative democracies. Voting on individual laws is a terrible idea. Just look at Athens. Regardless of that though, citizens of the US (in some states) actually do get to vote on individual laws, through "Issues" polls, or on state consitutional amendments. That's how some states get ridiculous "anti-gay marriage" laws passed that a representative body would probably avoid.
The US is not, by law, a 2 party system; it has just developed that way. Democrats and Republicans do not always vote in one big block either. There are "blue dog" Democrats who will occasionally side with Republicans on some things, for example. Middle of the road representatives sometimes team up to challenge their parties. So, in the end, there actually is reasonable representaton.
The problem is that most Americans don't really understand how they are represented. Many don't vote, or only do so when their vote counts the least, the presidential election. The Senators represent smaller areas, and Representatives represent even smaller areas than those, and that's just the FEDERAL government. Most of the stuff that actually affects your life is decided by your State/County/Local/City representatives. Hardly anyone votes for them, or can keep track of them. Which makes those votes the most powerful you can cast.
So, to somehow be on topic, for this issue it doesn't matter at all if they are Republican or Democrat. Pretty much all the federal reps are "it's a series of tubes!" boneheads for technical issues.
Quick embed your kiddie porn somewhere else! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm really starting to hate this fucking country.
I can see the headlines now (Score:2, Insightful)
Utter disingenuous bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
So is is about violence? Take a look at TV. I don't see him concerned about that.
SO this is about porn? I think not as P2P is one of many ways to obtain porn and has nothing to do with the production of it.
So this is really about lobbyists and big business buying support for an assinine policy that goes against the interests of the people this man is supposed to serve.
Now let's look at the technical side. Doe he even know what he is talking about? Obviously not. MAC addresses and IP addresses can be spoofed; neither of them can definitively ID a person.
Does he even understand general technology concepts? Obviously not, because if he did he would realize that the second one technological avenue is closed, the tech community will create a new one. Innovation cannot be stopped by repressive minded politicos who are in the pocket of consortiums.
This is an important issue - one that could be used to basically take away the privacy you have on your computer and internet connection. When this government uses things like this they will take advantage of them to the hilt.
Re:And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura? (Score:2, Insightful)
Pish Posh! That'll never happen. You best start walking now, rather than spend your valuable time trying to figure out how to fly! You'll waste your life away and never make it. Then you'll be sorry. At least walking you'll get there some day!
Today 10,000 people vote for Ron Paul, tomorrow maybe 100,000 vote for Ventura. If we never start it'll never happen.
Re:Tags (Score:1, Insightful)
it would cost a billion just to implement
You even answered your own question! When evaluating government, NEVER atrribute to incompetance what can be attributed to malice. Who says? About 10,000 years of history.
Re:And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is POSSIBLE to bring up a third party, if not to compete with the Reps and Dems, then to replace one of them. We aren't still voting for Whigs, after all.
I personally think it would be easier to start a third party at the bottom, in local and regional elections, than to make a bid for the presidency. But you need to attempt both to get the word out.
Re:And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sir, would you like your testicles served to you deep fried, boiled or shredded?
Not always easy to tell which is the lesser of the three evils
Re:And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura? (Score:3, Insightful)
What if I sell coffee out of my kitchen window ? Could I then claim to be an Internet Cafe, and not liable for my customer's actions ? Or is this yet another right which only companies over a certain size rather than real human beings have ?
Re:And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura? (Score:4, Insightful)
What you are pushing for is breaking democracy.
Re:And people ask why I support Jesse Ventura? (Score:3, Insightful)
1) He seems to have strayed from what my (and I think many other's) vision of what Libertarian is i.e. he believes in State's Rights at the cost of citizen's rights. He either fails to see that the States and the Fed govt are both equally capable of evil, or he has another agenda. and
2) It would probably cost him his Republican support, and possibly his seat in the House, because after all this is the party that likes to hang together.
democrats + republicans = 1984 (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously just getting rid of Bush is not going to save us. Both democrats and republicans want big intrusive governments. The only difference seems to be that the republicans are in favor of borrowing and inflation to feed their spending addiction while the democrats are quite content to use old fashioned taxes more (in addition to the other methods). Both parties want to be spending a lot more of our money with each passing year. Both parties are funded more than adequately by Big Business. Do the democrats still talk about class warfare while at the same time proposing raising taxes on the poorest segment of the population with regressive tax schemes? I don't see the point to listening to anything they have to say. It is all lies and they will do whatever they please once elected. Idealists, however naive, are not elected anymore. Only pragmatists whose only beliefs are in serving themselves and saying whatever they think will get them elected.
Lies and Glory (Score:3, Insightful)
Intrusion is good, extrusion is bad, inclusion is (Score:3, Insightful)
Government Intrusion into personal life is good for plutocrats and dogmatist.
Government extrusion up your ass is a fact of life in totalitarian countries.
Government body inclusion in the public body is a poison to personal freedom.
Public body exclusion from the Government body is totalitarian decapitation.
Government, Corporatist, TeleClerics, Plutocrats want to get in your pants, under your skin, break your bones, suck your marrow, eat your heart, rot you brains, and finally fuck the dead fetid corpses of the public.
Corporatist/oligarchy government is big business with public resources to exploit, squander, and destroy. Like rich kids with toy soldiers
Depression when it hits is bad for US never them. Toy-soldiers, Suzie-homemaker
Intrusive constant warrantless P2P searches and virtual home invasions for US, does not mean politicians, judges
Have you ever noticed how detached Cheney/Bush or Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon look/act when answering questions about our dead and wounded Warriors? To fools such as they and other PTB members we are just toy-Soldiers for play and fun. Look at the education system, health care, economic, telecommunications
Anyway,
This (P2P intrusion) is not any more obscene, troll
RIAA (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:SO... why do you support Jesse Ventura? (or, RT (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you bother to read TFA? File sharing? DRM circumvention? hollywood/music industry??
The only thing that the FA mentions is child pornography, molestation, rape, abuse, etc. Not once do they speak about any of the illegal things you've mentioned.
I'll admit that I've a fear of a legitimate child-porn-tracking system being used to combat other activities, esp. for people in no way involved in such horrific fetishes, but that isn't the point of the system (as stated) that Biden wants.
Whenever law enforcement at any level says of a tactic or system or program, "Don't worry -- we're only going to use it to go after [insert category of criminals here]," always assume an unspoken "NOT" between "we're" and "only." Hello??? Patriot Act, anyone? Warrantless wiretaps? National Security Letters?
Joe Biden's been an asshole for a long time. (Score:2, Insightful)
When he was fucking with gun owners, how many of you didn't care because you didn't own guns?
Now that he's fucking with P2P, we have to do something about it?
LK