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Congress May Consider Mandatory ISP Snooping
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Apr 29, 2006 06:56 AM
from the nosy-brother dept.
from the nosy-brother dept.
An anonymous reader writes to mention a News.com story covering a most disquieting trend in the House of Representatives. From the article: "Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette's proposal says that any Internet service that 'enables users to access content' must permanently retain records that would permit police to identify each user. The records could not be discarded until at least one year after the user's account was closed. It's not clear whether that requirement would be limited only to e-mail providers and Internet providers such as DSL (digital subscriber line) or cable modem services. An expansive reading of DeGette's measure would require every Web site to retain those records."
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Hardware: Support for U.S. Mandatory Data Retention Laws 264 comments
chill wrote to mention a C|Net article about an upswell in support for a mandatory data retention policy here in the U.S. From the article: "Top Bush administration officials have endorsed the concept, and some members of the U.S. Congress have said federal legislation is needed to aid law enforcement investigations into child pornography. A bill is already pending in the Colorado State Senate. Mandatory data retention requirements worry privacy advocates because they permit police to obtain records of e-mail chatter, Web browsing or chat-room activity that normally would have been discarded after a few months."
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ISP Tracking Legislation Hits the House 332 comments
cnet-declan writes "CNET News.com reports that Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives announced yesterday legislation to force ISPs to keep track of what their users are doing. It's part of the Republicans 'law and order agenda,' with other components devoted to the death penalty, gangs, and terrorists. Attorney General Gonzales would be permitted to force Internet providers to keep logs of Web browsing, instant message exchanges, and e-mail conversations indefinitely. The draft bill is available online, and it also includes mandatory Web labeling for sexually explicit pages. The idea enjoys bipartisan support: a Colorado Democrat has been the most ardent supporter in the entire Congress."
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In a related story... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In a related story... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:In a related story... (Score:5, Insightful)
Thinking about it, I -really- hate the government for going on about child pornography this much. I know a lot of people who were sexually abused as children, and I've heard enough stories of how it happened, and not once did it involve this "child pornography" that the government fears so much. Child abuse is a horrible, disgusting thing, and the fact that they're focusing on this small minority of cases where they film it, presumably because if they can't see it happening it's not real, pisses me off a lot.
Child sexual abuse has little to nothing to do with the internet, and the fact that they use something so serious as an excuse to restrict privacy makes me extremely angry.
Dangerous to be a Writer these days (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone remember the movie, "The Man with One Red Shoe?" Anyone can appear guilty if placed under enough scrutiny.
We need to fight back. We are losing the war on terror, because we are helping the terrorists. We are allowing our representatives to take away our liberties in exchange for empty promises of security. If we allow this to keep going forward, we'll be giving up our liberty for good. To paraphrase an old quote, all it takes for evil to triumph is for the rest of us to do nothing.
The U.S. has enemies and we need to be vigilant in our defense against them. But how is this change going help protect us? The sheer volume of information being kept will be prohibitive. Those that are really up to mischief will find a way around this monitoring. The rest of us will have our every experience on the web left open to scrutiny.
I can easily imagine people writing viruses that cause your computer to visit all sorts of questionable sites, so that millions of innocent people now have profiles that match those of the terrorists the government is looking for.
I don't know how to solve the problem of terrorism, but I do know that taking away my rights isn't part of the solution. The U.S. needs to stand as a beacon of liberty. We should be the one place in the world where you can be sure that you are in no danger from the government if you have done nothing wrong.
Fight back. Vote against anyone who tries to take away your rights, and remember, the Bill of Rights was meant to protect the most important rights, not to list the only rights you have.
Re:In a related story... (Score:4, Insightful)
On the bright side, the current president's approval rating is quite low so there is only a small chance his brother will get in. The problem is this: The way the American 2-party system has proven to work time-and-again is on "faith-based-economics". Essentially, one government spends insane amounts of money and throws the country into massive debt which the next government has to deal with. Typically these expenditures are popular (war here is the exception). As the other party gets elected to "handle" the debt, they tighten the purse strings and because they are harsh economically they will not get elected the second term. Of course any progress made on this front is spent by the, returning, first party.
The real challenge is to convince people in the West that tightening the purse strings is a good thing. Running such a high debt during a period of wild economic growth will hurt when the economy inevitably fails.
In Summary (To Stay More on Topic):
There will be a switch next time, but only for a single iteration of Government. The herd of turtles that is the American people look to have wised up, but the incumbent government has positioned their successors to fail. Look for only a short reprieve, if any.
Re:In a related story... (Score:3, Insightful)
No they haven't, not while all we have is a two party system where both parties both work to basically the same goals.
We really need third, and fourth parties that have a chance in this c
Re:In a related story... (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but the only way to make that possible is to change the vote counting mechanic. We currently use a plurality or "first past the post" mechanic which, for mathmenatical and practical reasons makes third and fourth parties inherently nonviable. Just look at the Ross Perot fisaco. He made the futile attempt anyway, and actuall pulled off an astounding percentage of the vote for teh attempt. And the result? The attempt and movment was quashed to zero in the subsequent election when the voters realize how dysfunctional our election system is and that any "smart" vote for a third candidate is thrown away and that it can and will tip the the "real" election between the two "real" candidates. That the third party candidate will just steal votes away from which ever main candidate he is most similar too. That your attemp at a "smart" vote will tip the election towards the candidate you less like. And that is true whether you are pro-Bush or anti-Bush. Both Bush elections had razor thin margins. A few thosand thrown away votes for a hopeless third party candidate could very easily have caused Bush to win, or equally such votes could easily have cost him the election.
The US is the oldest Democracy, meaning that we also have the "alpha-test" for election systems. The Founding Fathers were smart guys and did a great job, bt they just didn't know about these flaws in our electorial system and didn't know how to fix them. The good news is that huge mathematcal reseach has been done in game theory and in understanding election systems, and from the math and from historical experience in other newer democracies we now know much better election systems. In particular there is the Condorcet Method. [wikipedia.org] Each voter gets to rank the candidates in prefference order. You could then vote and register your First Choice prefference for a third party candidate, and do so without throwing away your vote... because you still get to register your Second Choice "lesser of two evils" prefference and still vote against your most hated "Greater of Two Evils" in the Last Place slot.
The best part is that instead of jumping back and forth between left wing
And if you already know all that, chuckle, well I still want to get it out there for other people to see.
The problem is that changing the election method can only be done by the legislature and changig the Constitution. And of course neither the Democrat party nor the Republican party wants to do that. Both perties would rather keep their duoploly control locked in a psudo-war with the other party, than to open the election process to thrid parties and lose that duopoloy control.
Changing the election process desperately needs to be done, but it is a practical political impossiblility - short of a voter uprising bordering on armed revolution.
-
Re:Condercet fails certain criteria. (Score:3, Interesting)
A bet you'd lose
I suggested and discussed the Condorcet method because it it is generally considered the best known met
People in the West ARE Frugal (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:People in the West ARE Frugal (Score:3, Informative)
However, the total number of miles someone over there drives is much less each year. There are some people in the American West whose commute is farther than the longest point to point
Re:In a related story... (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of us are more afraid of the constant threat of the government.
Re:In a related story... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they haven't. Three years after the suckers allowed Bush to attack a country for no reason, we're about to attack Iran for no reason.
And THIS one won't be some little insurgency of 20,000-40,000 people, but a Vietnam-style war with hundreds of thousands of insurgents and it will be about two to four times as big as Vietnam in terms of US troops that have to be deployed, number of civilians killed, and
WAY more expensive than even Iraq (say, two or three trillion dollars over the next ten years.)
The US's greatest military disaster in history is about to happen.
And at least half the US public - and virtually all of the media - is behind it.
No, they haven't learned a goddamn thing.
Re:In a related story... (Score:3, Interesting)
Only if people are watching the light when it shines. Blink, and the spin will cause the light to wander off in another direction. A few may see it, but the v
WTF? 86 - 100% approval rating from the ACLU? (Score:4, Informative)
How can this apparently high approval rating from a purported supporter of civil liberties be reconciled with Rep. Degette's recent anti-privacy action? Was the ACLU on crack when they scored her?
Re:WTF? 86 - 100% approval rating from the ACLU? (Score:4, Informative)
It appears from her own words [house.gov] that a representative from the DOJ told her a carefully constructed sob story about child pornography, complete with anecdote about how this precise law would have saved a child, and including the availability fallacy. She says she considered this "eye-opening", and so apparently she believes she drafted this law "for the children".
In other words, this bill was lobbied for by the DOJ by means of emotional appeal. It probably hasn't occured to Diana DeGette yet to consider how internet anonymity can be a potent tool for the longterm preservation of freedom in a democracy. Perhaps a few sob stories about China would be "eye-opening" to her. *nudges people from Colorado to action*
Won't work because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Won't work because... (Score:2, Interesting)
Um, a few mag tapes? All ISPs need to do is record the contact details and names of its subscribers, along with a record with time, date and duration of each DHCP lease
Re:Won't work because... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a slippery slope, and America has been on that slope since the nation was founded. Thomas Jefferson pointed out that, from a legal and governmental perspective, the United States Federal Government was about as good as it was ever going to get, because governments only get worse with time. He was right, as usual.
However, there have been inflection points where things got dramatically worse in a short period of time. World War II was the big one for us
Take the Patriot Act for example: Congress "addressed" such concerns by including "sunset" provisions in the original Act, but when the time came to volutarily give up those broad powers, they backpedaled in a hurry and renewed the damn thing. That's the way it always has been and is the way it always will be. That's why, when any government official (of any government) says, "we need these new powers for 'x'" you need to fight them tooth and nail, because odds are they don't need that power, they merely want it.
Our government doesn't need to monitor communications between a couple hundred million innocent civilians
Re:Won't work because... (Score:5, Insightful)
The cost is of course passed directly onto consumers in the form of higher charges.
It's agonizingly ironic; that Congress forces us to pay for the removal of our privacy.
Its a VERY old story (Score:3, Interesting)
Look to one of the oldest books: The Bible. In that day, the government supposedly made Jesus carry his own cross up a hill before nailed him to it.
In essence, they
Re:Won't work because... (Score:3, Insightful)
Along with a 15% processing charge. It's not a loss of rights, it's a market opportunity.
Will work, just not as planned. (Score:5, Interesting)
I know your questions are rhethorical, but from this Conservative Libertarian's viewpoint:
1. Who runs the country? Lobbysts, and those who hire them. The will of the people is little more than a quaint notion. Just look at this Amnesty program for ILLEGAL aliens. 80% of America is against it from recent opinion polls, but the politicians don't care. Same goes for the Dubai ports deal. America's against it, but the politicians will make it work anyway.
2. What does Congress think it's doing? Whatever the hell it wants. It's not like that 10th Amendment to the Constitution applies any more. Seriously, have you ever (EVER?) heard any poliician say "We can't do that, that's a State Right?" or "We can't pass a law requiring XYZ, that violates the 10th Amendment?" Nobody else has either.
3. Do they have any idea how much it will cost? No. Like they care. It won't cost THEM anything. That's your problem, buddy. Now get back to work paying your taxes. (Speaking of taxes, Tax Amnesty Day is the 3rd of June for 2006, meaning that if the tax burden were evenly distributed, the average person would work from Jan 1 to June 3 just to pay their taxes for that year. Now consider that 49% pays no federal taxes. Don't believe me? Go to the IRS web site and look it up yourself. http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/pub/irs-soi/01in01ts.x
Anything else I can clear up for you?
(And moderators, just because you disagree, it doesn't mean it's "flamebait" or "troll". It could simply indicate that I'm an idiot.)
Re:Will work, just not as planned. (Score:2)
Just a nit, but ITYM "Tax Freedom Day."
And it seems that there are varying opinions on when [taxfoundation.org] Tax Freedom Day [adamsmith.org] really falls. [cnn.com]
Simple Solution (Score:5, Funny)
What's that you say-- that you went here? Well, I am sure that you accessed some other page, merely masquerading as my page. Those phishers, you know. Very sneaky.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:2)
Re:Simple Solution (Score:2)
What for? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's it good for? Finding some terrorists (the excuse here)? Or child porn traders (the other excuse here)? What is it REALLY used for? P2P snooping. It's that simple.
Now, you cannot store everything that's been sent through the 'net. It's simply BY FAR more than you could credibly store. If they are dumb enough to demand that, it's time to buy HEAVILY into Samsung, Seagate and Matrox stocks. Over here, they are storing "connection data". I.e. who talks with whom.
Now, it might be me, but hasn't that already been rendered useless with projects like TOR and ANTS? Where your data is sent through multiple non-logging hops?
In other words, ISPs will have to spend more money on hardware. Since ISPs aren't some charity organisations, this means they have to up their prices to cover the additional expense. In other words, the 'net gets more expensive.
And this, in turn, means that you're going to fall behind, in use and availability of the 'net, to those nations that aren't dumb enough to demand some pointless logging.
Re:What for? (Score:2)
You didn't think it was merely a coincidence that the term for an unfeasibly large amount of data storage is a "Library of Congress",
Re:What for? (Score:2)
Re:What for? (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple! When NOT logging becomes illegal, only criminals won't be logging.
I should think such ano
Certainly, Congressman... (Score:3, Interesting)
What's that, Congressman? "Invasion of privacy" you say? Goodness, so it is.
What goes around... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What goes around... (Score:3, Insightful)
doubleplusungood (Score:2)
You get what you vote for. (Score:3)
Is this our future? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cat I. Terrorist
Cat II. Child molesters
Cat III. Everyone else
Regretably once that system is in place what will happen is this.
Cat I. Terrorist
Cat II. Child molesters
Cat III.Dangerously liberal
Cat IV. Dangerously conservative
Cat V. Too smart
Cat VI. ????
From there on, all they have to do is keep all the dirt they can on the subjects. If they ever present a problem for the goverment( by voicing their opinions), discredit them. Voila, they have absolut power. All they have to do is keep gas cheap, TV entertaining and food plentiful an the rest of the american citizenry will follow in line.
Let get this over with (Score:2)
As long as they let us choose our own colors for the tags, I think we'd agree as a society to g
Time for a little goose-gander sauce (Score:5, Interesting)
After all, of they think it's such a great idea, and not at all an invasion of privacy, they won't mind, will they?
Asking thieves to lend a helping hand (Score:2)
Retired Sandra O'Connor warned us.... (Score:5, Informative)
One word to save us all.... Encryption (Score:2, Interesting)
Wonderful (Score:2)
Sometimes I'm really glad I don't live in America.
Re:More business for the Hard Drive Companies (Score:2)
Re:You never know about final language (Score:4, Insightful)
We would absolutely regard the latter as the grossest, most revolting violation of our individual privacy.
Yet here there would be an acceptance of exactly that violation, with the sole caveat that it is being limited to a given medium of communication, email.
Note in the EU that this violation is now law, for emails and in fact also for all mobile phone calls.
Re:You never know about final language (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You never know about final language (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How much longer? (Score:2)
Re:Wilkommen to Der Homeland! (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, WWII ended over 60 years ago now, only someone really insular would still find Nazi jokes funny. I presume that's what you were implying in your own muddled way, no? That America is turning into a Nazi regime? Go to Germany and you will be hard pushed to find people proud of the events of WWII. Sure, there is a far-right minority, which worryingly is gaining some mindshare, however in general I think mocking privacy curtailments in a faux German accent is just a shite, lazy thing to do, and it sounds even more hollow when you suspect it was posted by an American. As we all know there is no room left for Americans to be mocking the (lack of) freedoms and democracy in other countries.
Re:Wrong summary (Score:2)
Don't kid yourself. It's a landgrab war, not a war on terror. And it could EASILY turn into a world war if we're not careful.
Re:I'm in favour of this. (Score:2, Insightful)
Want to know what the result will be? Nobody will host websites in the US. They'll just host it in another co