Michigan First With A Law That Could Outlaw VPNs

zaren writes "Holy frell, Taco, we're gonna be criminals! I was checking out Freedom to Tinker after reading the posting about that multi-state anti-VPN-style legislation, and I saw a new posting that says that Michigan has ALREADY passed such legislation, and it goes into effect on MONDAY, MARCH 31, 2003 . Guess I better tighten down the base station and batten down the hatches..."

Haha, This could be the end of NAT!

If I put three people behind a NAT'd firewall, the provider sees it as one paying customer and two thieves.

This doesn't only concern end users. This concerns any organisation that obtains an address range for a fee and use NAT to connect their network, including many ISPs.

This might be the end of NAT. Good riddance and welcome IPv6!

Re:Haha, This could be the end of NAT!

Can't wait to pay another 5 bucks a month so my handicapped little brother can surf pokemon.

All this does is make the isp aware of how many machines I have.

A while back the ma-bells tried to charge for every phone you had in your house, and they succeded for several years.

This is another in a long line of atrocities commited by our elected representatives.

The Ma Bell similarity

It was "Ma Bell", not "ma bells" or "Baby Bells" (which were the resulting smaller phone service providers after the 1984 break-up) and the similarities are many.

Back in the bad old days (prior to Jan. 1, 1984), you could only get a phone from AT&T. They owned Western Electric, which was the only manufacturer of telephone equipment. They owned the lines (there were some exceptions where GTE had a local market). If you wanted a phone, you had to accept the whole package.

You had to lease your phones from them -- you couldn't buy them. You had to pay extra for DTMF (Touch-Tone [TM]). Your monthly bill was based on the base rate times the number of phones plus the base local call charge plus the incredibly overpriced long distance calls, which themselves worked on a minimum of three minutes and charges were rounded up to the next whole minute.

They stifled technology much more so than IBM, even when it hurt them. It became cheaper and easier for them to have customers using DTMF, but because people wanted it rather than the damned dialing wheels, they kept on charging premiums, which meant they had to keep those old number nine crossbars in the COs rather than (or in addition to) the electronic switches.

The whole idea of ringer equivalence existed so they could shoot a charge down your line and know how many phones you had. If it didn't match, they'd come over for a "technical visit". If they saw signs that you had more than the paid/claimed number of phones, they'd either hardwire the phone in the jack or remove other jacks. You had to let them; it was their equipment.

People used to huddle around a phone to listen and talk at the same time because Ma Bell wanted you to pay twice as much to have two people at home talk to a caller at the same time.

ISPs are trying this game, requiring you to use their hardware, accept their version of "normal use", and pay per computer rather than for the amount of data transfer so they can claim "unlimited" or "flat-rate service. It may be illegal based on the same decision which finally allowed people to buy their own phones, have as many as they wanted and use them as they saw fit.

This needs to be stopped quickly. Lawyers need to compare these laws to the Orders from Judge Harold Greene which stopped AT&T doing this, and have this bad legislation removed. You people in Michigan need to get started!

woof.

Re:The Ma Bell similarity

It wasn't homework for me -- it was straight from memory, right down to the number nine crossbars (which made phreaking easy). Only after they disappeared were the phone companies able to run things like unauthorised tone detectors.

Another sick side of the stifling of technology was number tracing. It became a hackneyed device for all mysteries and thrillers, but the real-life side of it really did cause a lot of headaches. Ma Bell claimed they couldn't internally check connections. The police would have to call to prepare for a trace on a known line and Bell would send some poor schlub into the pits to physically trace a number.

A really good lineman with a lot of luck on certain equipment might have been able to find the line in question and track its connection within four minutes, hence the ubiquitous three minute minimum trace times in both film and reality. A lot of kidnappers and other criminals could have been caught were it not for Bell's refusal to acknowledge that they had the means to to immediately identify a call's path.

I forgot the obligatory link before: Bell System Property - Not For Sale" [bellsystemmemorial.com]. Surf around that site for lots of other information and neat stuff.

I haven't been able to find the Orders and Decrees from the actual case, but I'm pretty sure they're on-line somewhere.

woof.

Rotary phones (OT)

Wonder how many people here have ever even seen a rotary dial

Interesting note - I read a newspaper article a couple of years ago about a high school that put a rotary phone in the office, to prevent students from using the phone to call out..

Apparently they had no idea how to use one.

Re:The Ma Bell similarity

Back in the bad old days (prior to Jan. 1, 1984), you could only get a phone from AT&T.

You mean, you could only legally get a phone from AT&T. Lots of people, my family included, had "bootleg" phones. I distinctly remember my parents telling me, as a little kid, to keep quiet about the 4 extensions my father had wired up, should anyone in any kind of uniform ask about them.

Re:The Ma Bell similarity

Save that phone! Western Electric made phones that needed to last for 100 years, and their 100-year-old phones work fine. Why? Because they were never meant to be for sale to the public. They were for Ma Bell, who kept costs down by having indestructible equipment. The cheap POS equipment now is cheap because it can be.

The Bell System phones (all have a statement stamped in the metal stating "Prop. of Bell System, made by W.E." or something similar) have carbon mics for both mouth- and earpiece. Sound quality shot? Rap the handset against a table to compress the carbon again. The hardware inside is foolproof.

The rotary units don't need lubrication and are true beacons of design elegance and simplicity (they use an eccentric cam to control the pulse speed). The DTMF units used iron cores no chip to fry or die. Even the ringer is impressive.

If you don't want the thing, I'll buy it from you, and I don't care which model it is.

Re:The Ma Bell similarity

It's a "measure of power" only in the broadest sense. I'm gonna briefly get technical here and hope that you and maybe a couple other people notice this, since this story is more than 10 hours old.

One REN (Ringer Equivalence Number) represents a single ringer load of 7000 ohms (6929 Ohms resistance in series with 8F capacitance). U.S. (and most other) phones run at 48V (RMS) on-hook and 96V at ring.

Most phones ring at 20Hz and the REN carries the suffix 'A'; devices which ring at any (permitted) frequency have the suffix 'B'. The math gets complicated when you figure you're forcing 96VAC (RMS) down a few miles of occasionally looping copper, split out, to a device with leading and resistive components before a reactant load.

IIRC, most of Ma Bell's phones had 0.8A RENs. I don't have one here (nor any of the manuals -- I did say I was doing this from memory), so I can't check. But remember that you leased your phones from Ma Bell and they knew that the load you should have had. Generally, it was about 5600 Ohms times the number of phones. Even if you had paid for five phones, the difference in the load with an additional phone was notable.

Of course, in our house we only had "two phones", which we claimed we carried from room to room. We had a couple real old phones with much lower RENs (although we didn't know about the technical side until I became a phreak). Because my parents both worked back then in the 60s (not so common then), we were able to force Ma Bell's inspectors to visit Saturday. Friday night the rest of the phones disappeared into hiding places that even the LAPD with search warrants would have had a hard time finding.

Again, current RENs vary greatly, but back before 1984, there were standards. I was constantly hounded by my parents to disconnect my modem (300 baud acoustic) from the line when I wasn't using it.

Luckily, I got a job for a company that made, among other things, modems, and got a (then $3K+) 300/1200 jobber with an REN of 0.8 or so and which separated the phone pass-through from the circuit, allowing the modem to "replace" the basement phone.

I spent hours explaining that one to my father.

Irony

Michigan residents being arrested on april fools' day because of a law that's a joke.

What were they thinking???

(b) Conceal the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service. What were legislators smoking when they wrote that clause? That's so ridiculously overbroad that it could even be interpreted to make it illegal to call someone from a payphone without telling them where you are.

Re:What were they thinking???

What were legislators smoking when they wrote that clause?

I don't know, but whatever it is, I want some! It must be a REALLY good trip.

What a strange world

(b) Conceal the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service.

Apparently it is legal to have a concealed weapon, but having a concealed cell phone or disabling caller ID violates the law.

Re:What a strange world

Apparently it is legal to have a concealed weapon, but having a concealed cell phone or disabling caller ID violates the law.

I'll bite. I presume you're making a reference to Michigan relaxing it's handling of permits to Carry a Concealed Weapon (CCW) that occured about a year and a half ago from today. The media around here wasn't too for the idea, and they made it sound like every idiot out there could get one. I'm sure you looked up the legal rules behind getting one if this matter concerns you, but I'll repeat some of them here for other Slashdotter's that might not be from Michigan:

• You must be 21 years old.
  
• You must have a clean bill of mental health.
  
• You must complete an 8 hour pistol safety course.
  
• You must provide every adress you've lived at in the last 8 years.
  
• You must be fingerprinted, on your dime.
  
• You must provide them a photo with proper dimensions for your license.
  
• You must have not commied a misdemeanor in the past 3 years.*
  
• And there's a list of crimes that you cannot have commited in the last 8 years.
  

Once you meet all this criteria, you're subjected to a 30-90 day waiting period while they evaluate you, and before approval you must appear in front of a board so they can take a look at you and make sure you're not a total nut that talks to himself.

Now, my asterik after the 3 year misdemeanor thing. This means any type of misdemeanor, you know, like an expired license plate, fishing without a proper license (mistakes happen), getting caught with a beer when you're 20 years old.

On top of that, there's a slew of places that you cannot take one into. Namely schools (where they're probably needed most), any establishment that serves alcohol (Pizza Hut, Red Lobster), college classrooms or dorms, and religious worship buildings (unless you have permission). You can carry it to school though, if you stay in your car, and if the child you're dropping off is your own blood child. You can't drop off your step kids though, because people that drop off step kids at school are more likely to pull a gun and start firing that people dropping off their blood children. Or something.

Ah, and to go along with that rule about not taking it anywhere alcohol is served, you can't carry if you've got a BAC at or over 0.02 percent. That's less than a single beer. Come home from work still strapped, have a beer, and then take out the garbage and you'd better remember to remove your weapon before you step out of the house. You're in violation of the law if you don't. Wonderful.

So, if you really think Michigan's full of a bunch of gun toting conservatives you're wrong. It's full of a bunch of liberals who actually tightened the restricions on a CCW while making it look like every nutjob in Michigan could carry a pistol just to scare the snot out of people.

One more point, there's another segment of the population that can carry a gun: criminals. They don't have any of the restrictions the law abiding population does though. Nice that we gave them a list of places where they know good people CAN'T have guns now, isn't it?

Re:Schools?

You didn't happen to miss the myriad of shootings that happened over the past few years, did you? A disgruntled student knows when taking a firearm into school that there is a 100% guarantee that nobody else in that building has access to a firearm. It's like shooting fish in a barrel!

Let a few teachers pack a gun under their shirt, or on their ankle. We're talking about college educated people who have decided to pick a career to help children rise to their full potential here, not Joe Blow off the street. School's a friggen danger zone. Some nut job wants to pop a few children in the head, where's he gonna go? A school! You're guaranteed to have to wait for the police to get there before you can get taken down. You'd have time to reload your pistol over and over again as you mowed them all down.

I think we should allow guns in school for the safety of the children. Personally, any gun-free zone is a horribly unsafe place if you ask me. If you disagree I suggest you slap a sign in your front yard saying, "This is a gun free zone!". If any would-be criminals are casing for a place to rob, or murder, it's probably going to be yours.

Think about the children!

Punctuation in your article title

You left out the comma:

What, were they thinking???

The answer, of course, is "no!"

Re:What were they thinking???

Text of the e-mail I just sent to the Michigan AG's office:

***
Subject: Questions on Michigan law, section 750.540c.amended

This new law, due to take effect on Monday, Mar 31, 2003 (likely the day this is read) has brought some concern to those of us who are technically minded. The main issue stems from this portion:

(1) A person shall not assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise an unlawful telecommunications access device or assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise a telecommunications device intending to use those devices or to allow the devices to be used to do any of the following or knowing or having reason to know that the devices are intended to be used to do any of the following: ...
(b) Conceal the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service.

This would seem to make illegal any hardware and software designed to make use of such technologies as NAT (Network Address Translation), which is used to allow multiple computers or other devices to access a single connection to the Internet. Specifically, the ISP will see only the information about the router, which, as a consequence of the technology, blocks any information about the original computer sending the transmission.

Another portion reads thusly:

(2) A person shall not modify, alter, program, or reprogram a telecommunications access device for the purposes described in subsection (1).

This would seem to make illegal a feature on many routers that allows a device on the outside of the private network to see a MAC address that is not the true address of the router, but rather one that matches a network card of a computer behind the router. This allows the router to be used in cases where an ISP uses the MAC address as a security feature to prevent unauthorized access to its network. It would seem that use of this feature could be combined with the above concern to result in a doubling of the penalty.

Because of the popularity of these technologies, my reading of the law would make many Michigan residents into potential criminals, and could unfairly force them into paying more for additional connections to their ISP if the ISP chooses to forbid NATs and then proceed to systematically hunt down those that would use NATs.

Is this understanding of the law as written correct in letter if not in spirit? Can you provide any information on how the Attorney General's office plans to advise the various district attorneys on conditions under which violations of this law should be pursued? For example, could an ISP demand criminal charges be brought against someone who has used NAT technologies on its network? There is a large technical community that is now worried about this.

Thank you for your time.
***

I will post any response I get from them.

you got it

You got it. You need to read this legislation in the light of all the other legislation out there, signed into law or proposed. A Police State needs for everyone to be a criminal on paper, to have that potential,to be able to use that against them. Look at oregons proposed policial demonstration law. Walk in the street in a demonstration, you are facing 25 years to life. Use a normal router, with how it normally works, you are a criminal. Go into patriot act 1 and now 2, which they are migrating to different other bills to get it passed. Misdemeanors can be classed as supporting terrorism. You really don't want to be classed as a terrorist. You can become an un-person very quickly, and it wouldn't be in there if they weren't planning on using it, even more extensively than they are now. The gestalt with computers in general is that computers allow anonymous and semi anonymous and easy communications for the average person. Police States don't like that.

This is REAL stuff in all our faces. You can't keep up with it now,laws, laws,laws and more new laws, daily. It's at the federal level and all the state levels, assaults against born-with rights, just being a normal person, are fully underway, it's not theoretical or tin foil hat. This article is an example of just another one. Add 'em all up. Pretty spooky.

Thanks for sending that letter, looking forward to see what they say, if you get a credible response.

Appropriate Ayn Rand quote

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

Thus, making everyone subject to blackmail by the state--"obey our every command, or we'll find something bad you've done and punish you. Bow before Zod!"

Re:What were they thinking???

You forgot one important fact:

Most Michigan businesses (and probably most government offices) use NAT or proxy servers for their internet connections. I believe a zealous prosecutor could interpret proxy servers as hiding the specifics of the computer that is making the requests for connections.

Thus, just about every person with internet access at work is breaking Michigan law, under one interpretation. Including the AG that you are emailing.

As long as you are sending long and technical emails to the AG, why not ask if a spammer who fakes his headers is breaking the law...

Re:What were they thinking???

Most Michigan businesses (and probably most government offices) use NAT or proxy servers for their internet connections. I believe a zealous prosecutor could interpret proxy servers as hiding the specifics of the computer that is making the requests for connections.
Yep. And "most government offices" includes Federal government, like say the Department of the Navy, for whom I'm contracting. We routinely use VPN and NAT; in fact we need VPN for personnel on travel to connect to our network and do certain mission essential tasks. I can only imagine the scene when some state AG and the ISP he's working for decides to take down the Navy.
You know that neither the legislators nor the AGs have any clue what VPNs are or what NAT is, which is why they agree to this crap in the first place. These lawmakers and lawyers are the typical sort of people who hardly know where to begin when turning on their PCs yet they are making laws governing technology they know nothing about. Telcos/ISPs just shove a proposal under their noses, tell them it'll be good for the state, and they sign and try to pass it.
I was thinking about this last night before bed and I thought, "Well, it'll get appealed and some judge will finally shoot the damn thing down once it comes out just how ignorant this legislation is," which I think will probably happen, but that is problematic in its own right. Legislatures firing off ill-considered laws only to have those laws thrown out in judicial review is a phenomenon that is becoming more and more common. The net result of this is that the democratic process is delegitimized thanks to incompetent legislators and people come to rely on unelected wise men to see that society still functions. I don't think that legislators take their jobs seriously anymore - they just try to see what the courts will let them get away with.

Re:What were they thinking???

Reading section 219a.amended for the definition of telecommunications services makes me think that this doesn't prevent VPNs. I think the telecom service providers cannot conceal their physical link ends, but I don't see where anyone using those links to operate a VPN is required to do anything special...

Re:Phone extenders

this would also make calling cards illegal, since every time I get a call from one it comes from texas, not nevada where the call originates.

First the RIAA and now this all in one day?

WTF?! I can't rip CDs to MP3s anymore and now it's illegal to use a VPN?

Honestly, I'm starting to feel guilty as soon as I start using a PC. I must be breaking some law as soon as I sit down.

It's about time for the otherwise useless ACLU to start some legal action. Finally, they'll have something to pursue that's worthy of their time.

Sitting down is illegal...

Today the RIAA announced it was pushing for legislation that made the use of chairs illegal

"Pirates sit down to make these illegal copies that are destroying society" said an RIAA spokesperson "This is all about making it uncomfortable for the pirates"

When questioned as to the many valid uses of chairs the spokesperson replied "Sure this will have a minor effect on some people, but isn't that worth it to protect the American way of life and ensure the success of democracy that rides on the music and movie industries, what are you some sort of Communist or one of the Al Q'uada people.... guards arrest this person"

Also with effect 31 March...

See http://www.michiganlegislature.org/mileg.asp?page= getObject&objName=mcl-750-335-amended [michiganlegislature.org]

***** 750.335.amended THIS AMENDED SECTION IS EFFECTIVE MARCH 31, 2003 *****

750.335.amended Lewd and lascivious cohabitation and gross lewdness.
Sec. 335.

Any man or woman, not being married to each other, who lewdly and lasciviously associates and cohabits together, and any man or woman, married or unmarried, who is guilty of open and gross lewdness and lascivious behavior, is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for not more than 1 year, or a fine of not more than $1,000.00. No prosecution shall be commenced under this section after 1 year from the time of committing the offense.

History: 1931, Act 328, Eff. Sept. 18, 1931 ;--CL 1948, 750.335 ;--Am. 1952, Act 73, Eff. Sept. 18, 1952 ;--Am. 2002, Act 672, Eff. Mar. 31, 2003 .

This is the amended version, newly revised, not some ancient statute they've never gotten round to changing. What did they change from last time? They doubled the fine.

Michigan doesn't seem to have made it to the 21st century yet.

Re:Also with effect 31 March...

The point is not whether it would stand up in court, the point is that it is a form of legalized harrassment. If the cops, or anyone else in the law enforcement power structure, doesn't like you for any reason valid or not, they have just one more tool to fuck you over with impunity.

Sometimes just calling you a terrorist is more trouble than its worth, probably gets the FBI and the Dept of the Fatherland involved which might actually question a few too many baseless accusations. This law just keeps their options open.

FINALLY!

Finally Microsoft windows is illegal!!!!

Any web browser can be used to access a proxy server making All web browsers illegal in Michigan. Since IE is so integrated into the software (that it can't possibly be removed), it makes all windows OS's illegal!

Of course this applies to all linux browsers, but we can remove those.

Ahh yes, the crap is piling up, and it aint the dairy cows.

Not concealing anything.

Every IP packet I pass through my ISP contains a source and destination IP address.

What else do they need to know?

"Your honour, at what layer of the OSI Network Layer model is this bill to be enforced?"

"Er, case dismissed."

Re:Not concealing anything.

Every IP packet I pass through my ISP contains a source and destination IP address.
What else do they need to know?

Sec. 540c.
(1) A person shall not assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise an unlawful telecommunications access device or assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise a telecommunications device intending to use those devices or to allow the devices to be used to do any of the following or knowing or having reason to know that the devices are intended to be used to do any of the following:
(a) Obtain or attempt to obtain a telecommunications service with the intent to avoid or aid or abet or cause another person to avoid any lawful charge for the telecommunications service in violation of section 219a.
(b) Conceal the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service.
(c) To receive, disrupt, decrypt, transmit, retransmit, acquire, intercept, or facilitate the receipt, disruption, decryption, transmission, retransmission, acquisition, or interception of any telecommunications service without the express authority or actual consent of the telecommunications service provider.

The rest of the bill appears to provide support and procedural infrastructure for the section above.

Sorry.

Re:Not concealing anything.

In response to the posters point you quote the law, specifically that section labeled (c). What does that have to do with his point? His ISP provides IP service. He sends and receives packets via that service. Every damn one has a source and a destination. At what point is he in violation of the section you highlighted?

He violates no law, including this one, operating VPN tunnels via his ISP. He has the right to send and receive IP traffic. The law mentions nothing about the content of the traffic he sends or receives. Presumably he has permission from whoever is at the other end of the VPN to use it.

You, and the rest of you hypersensitive zealots, need to do better than highlighting some piece of legislation to make your point. It is plainly obvious to me that NAT, VPN, SSL, SSH, HTTP proxies or any of the other mechanisms you folks claim will be made illegal by this law are simply not.

But have your fun. It's what you're all about...

Re:Not concealing anything.

You might be right...

but what makes you think the isp, cops, judge, or jury would comprehend that ?

What will *really* happen...

"Hi, this is Mike. You remember me from yesterday? Yeah, well, I was wondering if I could "facilitate the recipt" of another couple of packets today. I was kinda thinking about maybe checking the weather."

"Kid, I'm giving you express authority to send you all the packets you want. Get the hell off the support line." ...

"Hi, this is Bob. I was wondering if I could decrypt something...I was thinking about buying a CD for my sister using https. Also, I..."

"Blanket approval. Go for it."

Re:Not concealing anything.

(c) To receive, disrupt, decrypt, transmit, retransmit, acquire, intercept, or facilitate the receipt, disruption, decryption, transmission, retransmission, acquisition, or interception of any telecommunications service without the express authority or actual consent of the telecommunications service provider.

Well, since VPN'd packets are encrypted before hitting the 'telecommunications service provider' network, decrypting it wouldn't be illegal under this law (as long as it's intended for you that is - the intercept clause would ensure that).

There's nothing here saying that anything has to be transmitted in the clear, and all your service provider is responsible for is shuttling packets - encrypted or no. Don't mess with that process, and you won't be breaking the law.

Not one but two !!!

(Yes I did RTFA)

This law has not one but two offensive clauses-

1(b) Conceal the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service.

1 (c) To receive, disrupt, decrypt, transmit, retransmit, acquire, intercept, or facilitate the receipt, disruption, decryption, transmission, retransmission, acquisition, or interception of any telecommunications service without the express authority or actual consent of the telecommunications service provider.

While 1(b) is probably the most obnoxious clause, 1(c) is not far behind... it makes it a "felony" to eg. hook two televisions on single cable connection and even make it a felony offense to put NAT boxen !! At our dorm, for World cup we put a computer with TV tuner card connected to cable connection and then used it to stream the transmission for people to watch in their rooms... HELL now we'll be criminals (and that too 'felony'!!) for that...

Fuck.

Who said "America- land of free" must now be turning in graves.

Re:Not one but two !!!

I still think all the geeks should collect in one state and make their own laws. I like Florida because it has nice beaches, warm weather, nude women, and the majority of it is uninhabited. Any state with few enough current citizens would do though. The only way to stop stupid laws like this is to have a political voice.. and being that we're outnumbered by morons we need to collect in a large enough group in a small enough region of morons so that we can be heard. Having our country controlled by corporate interests and religious fanatics isn't exactly good for our future.

Free State Project

Perhaps this [freestateproject.org] would interest you.

Internet Made Illegal

This is ridiculous. In a broad sense, this would outlaw an PPP connection that assigns an ISP customer a different IP address with every session. Not only that but the nature of such legislation would outlaw virtual domains using Apache and could be applied to the way the Internet has come to work in a limited IP space. I mean, in order to find out who is who on a shared IP web server, you would have to have access to the configuration files.

With so many domains sharing IP addresses or having IP addresses provided by big companies such as HE there is an amount of obfuscation built in to the DNS system to allow flexibility on the host side. Can't they get busy with spam legislation instead?

Telemarketers?

Would this apply to telemarketers who conceal their CID information, or 'fake it' with one of those new PBX's?

well, the ONLY good news is...

I don't think that any of us who have the misfortune to live in MI will have to volunteer our own asses to test this law.

An analysis of what comes out of state government and local MI city and township governments via Internet should be adequate to provide conclusive evidence of massive violation of this law.

I mean, looking at their E-mail, websites, anyone know about VPNs or crypto use by the legislature? While the law only forbids decrypt, encryption isn't a hell of a lot of use without decryption at the other end.

The problem is forcing action on the complaints. Taxpayer suits? Don't know, I think it's time for input from EFF and/or any telecommunications lawyers reading this thread.

Add to that DSL and Firewalls

Here is an interesting article in The Register [theregister.co.uk] which describes pending legislation in both Massachusetts and Texas are that would extend the DCMA to make devices such as DLS routers and firewalls illegal.

VPN against my ntl: T&Cs already

http://www.ntlworld.com/legals/user-policy.htm

18. Use of Virtual Private Network (VPN)

As stated above, the ntl Internet and/or Interactive Services are for residential use only and we do not support the use of VPN. If we find you are using VPN via the ntl IP network we may instruct you to stop using it and you must comply with this request. This is in order to prevent problems to ntl (eg network performance) and other Internet u FO.

make the dog vomit up its tail

This is easy for me to write, I'm in Europe so can't participate; however, there have been calls for geeks to politicise, to make their voices heard...

If every university and college student turned him/her self into the police on Monday morning for being in violation of this new law, the system would choke. It'd get a hell of a lot of media attention too. Something has to be done... these laws, largely unenforceable, continue to be passed... each one errodes the rights of ordinary people...

I simply can't fathom how a law this monomentally stupid has been passed... but it's got to be challenged. A mass protest would certainly expedite it and might prevent similar laws from being passed in other states where they're being considered.

The network is the computer

Here I sit using at least two computers simultaneously for the simple reason that they both do different jobs. In my house there are four devices capable of being connected to my network hub and that in turn connects to the cable modem I have. Given that it is just me using all these at the same time why would it make sense to charge me for each computer? There's just me. Now, if I set up a dial up so that other users can run off my cable then yes that is bad and a law that said I could not resell the service I have bought would be perfectly reasonable, but this is my house, my connection and they are my machines. I pay for a fat(ish) pipe to the outside world. Does the water company charge me more because I have more sinks than my next door neighbour? They may charge me more if I use more water but having more sinks doesn't matter, it is the flow that matters. Same should be true with a network. I am happy to have a capped bandwidth (500Kbs) because I am paying a flat rate for that. However, the four computers I have can't get more data through than one on its own could so what is the problem? What happens if I want to play around with a beowulf cluster? Are they going to outlaw clusters unless you can get some special exemption? You certainly wouldn't want to have to get an IP address for every machine in a big cluster. Oh, and what about the company providing the connection, are they going to ensure that if I have to pay for individual connections for each machine they will still protect me from all the twits who probe my system on a daily basis and do a better job than I can myself with my gateway? This bill is only going to benefit the money grabbing service providers and those idiots who love to try to root machines.

IMHO of course :-)

IF YOU ARE GOING TO APPEAR AT A FORUM FOR THIS LAW

...then the above post makes a great analogy for the uninformed, uncaring politician:

Does the water company charge me more because I have more sinks than my next door neighbour? They may charge me more if I use more water but having more sinks doesn't matter, it is the flow that matters. Same should be true with a network.

This kind of simplification is what really appeals to politicians. Makes sure, if you attend a public formum to gauge opinion on such laws, that you say things like this. Is there anything else that should be said in simplified politician-speak? Please list anything and everything you can think of!

This applies to UNLAWFUL devices

Most of you are missing a key phrase in the legislation. The part most people are leaving out is: A person shall not assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise an unlawful telecommunications access device....

Now, what is an "unlawful telecommunications access device"? That is answered under 750.219a which is entitled:

750.219a Obtaining telecommunications services

with intent to avoid charge; violation; separate incidents pursuant to scheme or course of conduct; enhanced sentence based on prior convictions; definition.

Section 219 defines an unlawful device as:

(a) A telecommunications access device without the authority or consent of the subscriber or lawful holder of that telecommunications access device.

I read this to mean to hijack someone else's "telecommunication device".

(b) A counterfeit telecommunications access device.

If you read the section further, this applies to illegal cable descramblers and stuff like that.

(c) A fraudulent or deceptive scheme, pretense, method, or conspiracy, or any device or other means, including, but not limited to, any of the following:
(i) Using a false, altered, or stolen identification.
(ii) The use of a telecommunications access device to violate this section by a person other than the subscriber or lawful holder of the telecommunications access device pursuant to an exchange of anything of value to the subscriber or lawful holder to allow that unlawful use of the telecommunications access device.

I think we can all agree that FRAUD is bad.

Re:This applies to UNLAWFUL devices

Except that all a cable operator has to do is declare in their terms and conditions that you may not run NAT and that you may not hook multiple computers up to your network connection without paying a fee for the extra computers. Bada-bing, bada-bam, your NAT hookup is now not just against the T&C's, it's a criminal offense.

In the specific case of NAT, this law has the effect of permitting cable operators to maintain a cable-tv-like fee plan, rather than simply setting reasonable charge schedules for the actual bits transferred. There's no reason why the law should be molded to enable cable companies to avoid rational pricing according to the nature of the technology at hand.

The whole point of this is to prevent cable modem users from sharing their internet access over wi-fi and the like with neighbors. That's a laudable goal from the cable companies' view, but it ignores the fact that what really costs the cable company is the number of bits transferred. If I am NAT'ing to a neighbor and my neighbor uses 1% of the Internet bandwidth that is going over my cable modem, the incremental cost of that is 1%. The cost to the cable companies profit, though, is 50% across our two domiciles.

That's what this law is for, and it's not legitimate.

How to use this law to get rid of the legislators

1) phone legislator
2) ask him his exact location
3) if he tells you, say thanks and hang up. Wait 5 minutes go back to step 1)
4) if he hangs up without telling you, get him locked up for concealing the destination of the telecommunication.

Repeat until all the legislators are locked up, then elect some people who are less dumb.

Unenforcable

Specifically:

(1) A person shall not assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise an unlawful telecommunications access device or assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise a telecommunications device intending to use those devices or to allow the devices to be used to do any of the following or knowing or having reason to know that the devices are intended to be used to do any of the following:

Establishes that owning, creating, or publishing information on how to create a device that violates any of the following items is a felony. The item in question is:

(a) Obtain or attempt to obtain a telecommunications service with the intent to avoid or aid or abet or cause another person to avoid any lawful charge for the telecommunications service in violation of section 219a.

Yet the bill does not put a limit on what telecommunications services are allowed to charge for. Therefore, if you're local ISP decided to charge for say each HTTP request, they could sue Microsoft for Internet Explorer's ability to download an unlimited number of webpages (since it is avoiding any lawful charge for telecommunications service).

A half-way decent lawyer should have a field day with this bill...

Are we all reading the same law?

I fail to see anything in this amendment that applies to VPNs. It appears to be specifically designed to target phone phreaking. It's all about screwing with telecoms services. VPNs don't do that.

They don't obtain telecoms services without intent to pay (1a), they don't conceal the origin or destination of the traffic (1b), and they don't intercept, disrupt, re-transmit, or otherwise fuck with your, or anyone else's, service (1c).

Unless you've deliberately cracked your ISP in order to run your VPN, you've not fallen foul of this law.

Get some perspective.

[Interestingly, this does appear to make IP address spoofing illegal - but I consider that to be a good thing.]

Uhh... YOU need to read the Bill...

I hope when you decide to become a lawyer that you'll do more for your client than skim the legislation and hope for the best, because your research skills SUCK.

Note the following line in the ammendment.

(b) "Telecommunications access device" shall have the same meaning as in section 219a.

Here's the URL for Section 219a.
Section 219a [michiganlegislature.org]

(b) "Telecommunications access device" means any of the following:

(i) Any instrument, device, card, plate, code, telephone number, account number, personal identification number, electronic serial number, mobile identification number, counterfeit number, or financial transaction device as defined in section 157m that alone or with another device can acquire, transmit, intercept, provide, receive, use, or otherwise facilitate the use, acquisition, interception, provision, reception, and transmission of any telecommunications service.

(ii) Any type of instrument, device, machine, equipment, technology, or software that facilitates telecommunications or which is capable of transmitting, acquiring, intercepting, decrypting, or receiving any telephonic, electronic, data, internet access, audio, video, microwave, or radio transmissions, signals, telecommunications, or services, including the receipt, acquisition, interception, transmission, retransmission, or decryption of all telecommunications, transmissions, signals, or services provided by or through any cable television, fiber optic, telephone, satellite, microwave, data transmission, radio, internet based or wireless distribution network, system, or facility, or any part, accessory, or component, including any computer circuit, security module, smart card, software, computer chip, pager, cellular telephone, personal communications device, transponder, receiver, modem, electronic mechanism or other component, accessory, or part of any other device that is capable of facilitating the interception, transmission, retransmission, decryption, acquisition, or reception of any telecommunications, transmissions, signals, or services.

Note that telephone numbers, PINs, and account numbers are considered telecommunication access devices. ...AND YOU DON'T THINK THESE BROAD DEFINITIONS DON'T INCLUDE MODEMS AND ROUTERS THAT HAVE NAT???

What color is the sky in your world?

BTW, This has nothing to do with being anti-George Bush, anti-corporation, anti-war, or anti-republican. This is about EVERYDAY corruption that's been happening in this and EVERY OTHER country since the dawn of civilization that infects EVERY political party.

Grow up and stop being naive.

Are you people paranoid?

Ok you guys are just being a little to anal retentive with the words.

First off disguising origin. Anyone with half a brain knows you cannot get a location from an IP address. What they mean by it is IP Spoofing. If I'm a Comcast customer, I can't set my network to trick others into thinking I'm on Verizon, AOL/TW's, etc. If I am a Comcast customer, then I cannot disguise my IP to say otherwise. If the law needs my physical location, they can go through the legal channels and get it from Comcast.

CID blocking is iffy. I do not think this wouild be affected as it would force SBC and such to discontinue services like Privacy Manager. Second the biggest concern is telemarketing. The FCC is setting up the National Do Not Call list in July with enforcement in September. Why worry?

VPNs would be legal at this point because a) No state legislature is going to tell a corporation (Borders, the big 3 auto makers come to mind) that they can no longer use thier legit VPNs. And if they go after legit personal VPNs, one could claim discrimination based on that. Now if your ISP bans VPNs (which is thier right) then this law is moot anyways. b) Comcast et al do not ban VPNs to my knowledge nor do they ban use of NAT. I bet they love NAT because instead of charging you $10-15 for more IPs, they can charge you and others $40/mo for other individuals. Last I heard, Comcast only cares about multiple computers if they are hogging bandwidth or if non-customers are getting regular access (meaning sharing with neighbors via 802.11, etc.)

Can you think of any modern applications that this law is really targeting? Cell phone cloning and cable descramblers come to mind fast.

Re:What about content regulation/restriction

Doesn't pretty much every ISP include, in their terms of service, a disclaimer that they take no responsibility in any way for any data travelling over their network?

That could easily be interpreted as giving up their rights to deny permission, as it's not their permission to give, after they state that.

Does this even apply to consumers?

(1) A person shall not assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise an unlawful telecommunications access device or assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise a telecommunications device intending to use those devices or to allow the devices to be used to do any of the following or knowing or having reason to know that the devices are intended to be used to do any of the following:


Umm, doesn't this apply to the company manufacturing NAT and similar devices, rather than common citizens? If that's the case, Michigan would need to drag Linksys, Cisco, CompUSA, Circuit City, and about 10,000 other manufacturers and distributors into court.

It's unenforceable...

As I read it, and as others have pointed out, the new law makes an instant criminal out of (probably) 95%+ of the DSL and cable DSU users in the affected state. Anyone who uses a NAT-capable device (myself included) could be in a most uncomfortable position due to crap like this.

That's the bad news. The good news is that, given the sheer volume of people that already have NAT-type hookups, I don't see how this can possibly be effectively enforced. Even if the affected states try to make an example out of a few folks, it'll probably get appealed until doomsday.

I predict widespread 'civil disobedience' at first, followed by an effective court challenge that will overturn such legislative lunacy.

Anti WiFi?

Security expert Steve Bellovin writes [mail-archive.com] that he thinks this bill is intended by ISPs to fight off WiFi hotspots.

There has been a controversy in the WiFi arena about whether commercial WiFi services will take off or whether free access via "warchalking" etc is going to make it impossible to make a profit from commercial wireless access. Mostly it is the ISPs who are operating these commercial services (in partnerships with some national companies that set up the technology). And these same ISPs have anti-sharing clauses in their end-user contracts that are widely ignored.

This Michigan law, like the others that have been proposed, would make it arguably illegal to operate a free, public wireless access point without permission from your ISP. And if your ISP is trying to sell commercial wireless that you'd be competing with, you certainly won't get permission.

This law puts teeth in that prohibition. It could doom free wireless. A very big deal indeed.

Newspeak = English: Translation of 750.540c

So that normal mortals can understand this cobbled-together snobby elitist English, I've translated it from newspeak to English. It is unfortunate that politicians writing these laws do not see the need to make them understandable to those who need to obey them.

Devices covered under this bill are devices intended to:

1. Obtain a telecommunications service without paying for it.
2. Conceal the existence, origin, or destination of any telecommunications service.
3. Do anything with a telecommunications service without the consent of the service provider.
4. Hijack a subscriber's telecom access device without his/her consent.
5. Counterfeit telecommunications (e.g., cable descramblers).
6. A fraudulent or deceptive scheme, pretense, method, or conspiracy, or any device or other means; e.g.:
   1. Using a fraudulent identification.
      
   2. The use of a telecom access device to violate this section by a non-subscriber to exchange anything of value to the subscriber to allow that unlawful use of the telecommunications access device.

What the bill criminalizes:

1. The assembly, development, manufacturing, possession, delivering, offer of delivery, or advertisement of the aforementioned devices.
2. The modification of a device to make it an aforementioned device.
3. The delivery, offer of delivery, or advertisement of plans, instructions, or materials for the manufacture, assembly, or development of the aforementioned devices.

Criminal penalties for violating this bill:

1. Up to 4 years of imprisonment.
2. A fine of up to $2,000.
3. Both 1 & 2.
4. The violator must forfeit the device and receive no compensation.
5. The violator must pay restitution.

Important notes:

1. Violation of this bill is a felony.
2. Each aforementioned device constitutes a separate violation. In other words, a person may be sentenced an additional 4 years and $2,000 for each aforementioned device (s)he owns.
3. This bill does not affect amateur services licensed by the FCC.

Definitions:

1. Telecommunications (service provider) -- any service lawfully provided for compensation to facilitate the origination, transmission, retransmission, emission, or reception of intelligible information over a telecommunications system
2. Telecommunications access device -- basically, anything which can access, utilize, manipulate, etc a telecom system.
3. Telecommunications system -- any system, network, or facility owned or operated by a telecommunications service provider

Those are all defined in section 219a of Michigan's Penal Code. I went to Michican's home-page, and searched for 219a. Unfortunately, only the proposed wording of the bill was offered, and the final bill's language was not. So I had to go to LexisNexis. What a scam to privitive public information. So, this bill covers internet services, telephone services, TV-services, satellite services, an so on and so forth. Since it covers retransmission, it would criminalize the use of WiFi, creating an anti-social community (as RMS says), where helping your neighbor is frowned upon. Even though you are presumably paying for 24-7 full-time use of your broadband, you aren't permitted to use it 24-7 if that means letting other people access your system and use it. Furthermore, you could get up to 4 years in jail for this. Child molesters sometimes don't get 4 years in jail. Additionally, each subsequent violation (e.g., device owned) would get you an additional 4 years if the judge decided that you were to serve the sentences consecutively. This may also criminalize such things as TiVo, since they effectively re-transmit (time-shifting) programmed scheduling to the user at a later time, removing commercials, and do not have the TSP's approval.

Every cloud has a silver lining

"(b) Conceal the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service."

So if a telemarketer keeps their number from showing up on your CallerID screen you can have them arrested as a terrorist. Cool.

The IETF will get busted...

This is going to make a number of RFC's illegal...

How entertaining.

Re:Could someone explain

VPN - Virtual Private Network.

Say, you had a family. Wife, four kids, and a couple of mutts.. etc. You have a computer you do a lot of serious work on, a computer you tinker around with, your kids each have one. There may be another in the den you use to play games on and maybe use in conjunction with the TV and stereo.

But you have one internet connection.

By use of Network Address Translation (NAT), you can set your system up so that all the computers can access the internet through a router/switch. You can dedicate a clunker machine for this, or just use a router/switch designed for this.

The ISP gives you so much bandwidth for so much money. If only one machine is using the connection, it gets all the bandwidth. If more machines start using it, the switch shares the available bandwidth amongst the machines requesting it.

Using NAT, your machines can be configured so they can talk to each other privately without involving the internet - even though they are communicating through the network card - because the switch can be configured to keep local chatter off the net. Certain IP numbers do not route, such as the 10.xxx.xxx.xxx subnet. So you have an entire class A subnet to play around with for your home or business. Everybody has it. All yours. It won't route. But if you want the internet, the switch will recognize a routable number and gate you onto your internet connection, and provide the necessary address translation so the connection is routed between the appropriate machines.

Personally, I can not determine any difference between whether or not multiple *machines* are using the bandwidth, or multiple instances of browser windows on one machine is using it, as far a paying for bandwidth delivered goes. What puzzles me is how anyone could consider a NAT box illegal, as every packet going through still has completely valid source and destination fields - it won't route through your ISP without them. At the ISP level, its completely traceable as to who's getting what.

So I am puzzled.. I am completely failing to see the logic of this legislation. It makes just about as much sense to me as some sort of legislation mandating each child gets his own mailbox in front of the house.