DOJ Wants ISPs to Retain All Customer Records 471
doubledoh writes "CNET reports that the Department of Justice is 'quietly shopping around' the idea of requiring ISP's to retain all data of their customer's online activities for at least several months. The SEC already mandates that publicly traded firms retain all company emails for at least 2 years, but it looks like John Q. Public may also soon be subject to similar Constitutional violations. Big Brother, here we come."
Libraries? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does this mean I have to start snooping on my patrons, even if I don't currently? At the moment, I don't even store who's using the machines, let alone browsing habits.
Re:Libraries? (Score:5, Insightful)
All this 1984 shit pisses me off. I'd rather take my chances with the terrorists than give up all privacy and freedom. The administration can go fuck itself.
Sure thing (Score:3, Interesting)
I just love it when people try to regulate something that they know nothing about.
Re:Sure thing (Score:3, Funny)
Should check out Penn & Teller (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it a Constitutional violation? (Score:2, Insightful)
Those documents can't be trawled without a court order, so there isn't really anything about this that is in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
It may be a little bit distasteful in its invasion of privacy, but it is no more unconstitutional than cameras at intersections or strip searches at the airport.
Re:Is it a Constitutional violation? (Score:3, Insightful)
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Re:Is it a Constitutional violation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Two months of Internet data? I consider that roughly as invasive as having an agent follow me around for two months. Seriously, these days I read my news online. I use e-mail for communication. I look up anything I want to on google instead of the library. I check out products I want to buy. Two months of IRC logs I don't even want to talk about. As long as I am doing nothing wrong, that is NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS. Sigh. Building a massive profile database is simply wrong.
Free state:
1. Suspicion/reason for inquery
2. Get court order
3. Gather evidence
4. Prosecute
Police state:
1. Gather massive profile
2. Get court order*
3. Review profile for evidence
4. Prosecute
*optional
Do you remember the time, when the difference between us and the East block was that in the East block, the government kept a massive profile on everyone? When the difference was that you could travel around, without the government recording all your movements? he founding fathers never imagined a situation like today. Then, people had to watch people. Now, machines watch people. I am sure that if they had, they would have made an amendment limiting the right of government to do so ex facto, before the fact.
Kjella
Re:Is it a Constitutional violation? (Score:5, Insightful)
One day, after my application for a Parental License is approved by the DOJ, I hope my kid doesn't ask me, "Daddy, what was freedom like like when you were a boy?"
Or the even worse question, "Why didn't anyone try to stop them from taking away your freedom?"
I guess I'll just have to reply, "The Ministry of Peace needed to combat terrorists."
Re:Is it a Constitutional violation? (Score:3, Interesting)
Properly indoctrinated, he won't even believe in the value of your freedoms.
I love a good dystopia!
Re:Is it a Constitutional violation? (Score:5, Funny)
Come on you are being reactionary, Freeedom will still be around well into the future. Your kids are safe. It will be just a new and improved freedom in Amerika. And with that great new freedom will come great responsibility to defend it.
To protect our freedom we will have to institute more checkpoints so that the criminals, terrorists, tax evaders and other enemies of freedom can be caught as they try to subvert our freedoms. To help us in our fight against freedom haters, universal surveillance will be possible for the first time in history. Powerful computers will be able to identify suspicious behavior so that activity records can be flaged for further study. Almost immediately any suspicious individual, could be automatically restricted to geographically defined areas, so that any potential subversive activities can be squelched and damage to freedom limited. We will call this the Cat Stevens freedom protection system, or CSFP for short. Once access to government controlled privileges such as transportation are limited, then offenders can in most cases be convinced that freedom gives you many many benefits, such as health care and access to alcohol.
Everyone has to do their fare share to defend Freedom. That means that people must work hard and contribute to freedom. In fact I imagine the economy will be replaced in whole by freedom. No longer will we be limited by the scourge of market economics where people of dubious character exchange goods, services and ideas without any concern for their contributions to freedom. But rather people of esteemed character will get credits for their efforts. We can call them freedom credits. This will allow those most deserving of our respect, for their efforts in support of freedom, to most enjoy freedom's benefits. After all those who don't work for freedom obviously don't want it.
So, rest assured. In the future your child will be much more than happy in our brave new world where freedom is the new currency and is at the very core of our society.
Re:Is it a Constitutional violation? (Score:3, Informative)
The question of privacy in the situations you mention revolves around the difference between rights and privileges. In the U.S., you have a right to personal privacy within certain boundaries. The authorities can not invade or search your home without due process. That process supposedly involves the judicial review and agreement that the authorities have a certain level of reasonable belief that evidence exists establishing your involment in criminal activities. This freedom has traditionally been extende
So if I build my own internet (Score:5, Interesting)
How about if I have my own virtual internet, running on top of the real internet? Do I become a virtual ISP and then I have to keep logs?
What if I don't use the same physical protocol to move bits? E.g. instead of volatages on a wire, I used morse code or smoke signals -- do I then esacpe the logging requirement?
How big can a LAN/WAN be before it becomes the internet (assuming it isn't connected to the unfree Al Gore created internetwork)?
What if the information is not contained in the protocols, but some side-channel? Do I, as an ISP (virtual or otherwise), have the duty to discover and provide "side-channel" logs?
So THAT'S what George W was talking about.. (Score:2)
Re:So if I build my own internet (Score:2)
It wouldn't matter to the government whether you kept logs or not, they're going to nail someone either way. It might matter to you if you intend to pass the blame onto someone else though.
Re:So if I build my own internet (Score:2)
Re:So if I build my own internet (Score:2)
"
Obligatory Futurama quote (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, well... I'm gonna go build my own internet, with blackjack and hookers. In fact, forget the internet!
what a great idea ! (Score:2, Insightful)
suckers...
In europe they're trying to get this same thing going.
People are far to easy about this, camera's in the street, etc etc etc... Not in just the US, but in Europe as well.
Re:what a great idea ! (Score:3, Informative)
A return to the "Black Chambers"? (Score:5, Interesting)
AHH! At last! A valid reason for SPAM. Clog up the backups...
Seriously though, surely to be thorough this would also require the post office to steam open and photocopy all correspondence? It'd be a return to the so-called Black Chambers that once existed in the US and Europe that opened dipolomatic letters.
Re:A return to the "Black Chambers"? (Score:3, Informative)
An ISP Info Tax (Score:3, Insightful)
So are the DOJ offering to pay for all this? Storing that volume of data isn't free, in fact its bloody expensive. Why should the ISP's have to pay for this themselves, they won't get any benefit from it.
Its like a hidden tax
Re:An ISP Info Tax (Score:5, Insightful)
No, You and I are going to pay for all of this.
Along with paying for the occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq [wikipedia.org] plus all the other places the US currently occupies [occupationwatch.org], and most likely will soon attack, invade and occupy, specifically Iran and North Korea, all in the name of democracy and because "They hate our freedom"(tm)
Its like a hidden tax
Yes, it's called "Taxation without representation" [wikipedia.org]
Welcome to the New World Order [wikipedia.org]
Actually... (Score:5, Funny)
Osama just called to say he's hung up his terrorism hat. We no longer have enough freedom to be worth hating.
Re:Actually... (Score:3, Interesting)
-- Oct 21, 2001 Osama bin Laden [cnn.com]
Brokerage firms and ISPs are not parallel (Score:5, Insightful)
Allowing for searching of ISP logs is much more a violation of customers' privacy. There is no notification to the customer, the Justice department keeps asking for the ability to review these records without issuing a subpeona and without any oversight.
Presenting the ISP logs as an extension of the SEC rules is both incorrect and dangerous. The SEC rules are primarily for the protection of customers and are well founded Constitutionally. The ISP snooping is not.
Re:Brokerage firms and ISPs are not parallel (Score:2)
Section 8
The Congress shall have Power
Clause 3: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
For the benefit of the non-US people here (Score:2)
Re:For the benefit of the non-US people here (Score:5, Interesting)
Amendment IV - Search and seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Re:For the benefit of the non-US people here (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, if those logs were actually searched or data mined, then perhaps it would fall foul of the "unlawful search" clause, but failing that, I don't see that it does violate that particular Amendment.
(Of course, IANAL, etc)
Re:For the benefit of the non-US people here (Score:2)
This has been going on in the UK for years (Score:2, Informative)
Big brother's already here, and has intercepted you reading this comment.
Big Brother loves you.
In argentina... (Score:2, Informative)
Ok, avoid the bad joke, today I found out this link about a law for ISP and how much they should log and for how much this info should be keeped [altavista.com].
The original link is in spanish, but in resume it talks about logs of all user activity (sited visites, information trasmited, etc) and how it should be keeped by ten years... and of course, how the ISP should take charge of all this, no the state.
"Patriotic" ISP's (Score:4, Insightful)
Tracking -everything- all users do online might be problematic - but certainly a list of all the web sites a given user hits in a month wouldn't be too tough.
Presumably they'd need a warrant -require- an ISP turn over the logs - but there'd be nothing preventing some of the more "patriotic" ones from "cooperating in a more pro-active fashion". Ie - just turning over a nice synopsis of everything on a monthly basis.
Don't think it's possible? There's a case in Seattle where the FBI tried to get a library to hand over a list of everyone who checked out Osama Bin Laden's biography.
I've personally provided web server logs to police without a warrent because a bomb-threat was involved. I'm 100% sure that case was legit - but I probably would've helped if I was only 60% sure. In reality - they were my employers servers - so I didn't really have a choice.
"We think 1 of the 10,000 customers you service might be up to something really bad. We'd really like your logs. All of them."
Are you gonna say no? Is your boss going to let you say no? Requiring ISPs to have the data on hand is not far from requiring the data be readily available to the government upon a "request for cooperation"
Re:"Patriotic" ISP's (Score:2)
Re:"Patriotic" ISP's (Score:3, Funny)
[1] unless I'd recently eaten asparagus.
It will kill small ISPs (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It will kill small ISPs (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Democracy! (Score:5, Funny)
Stupid Government, Bad (Score:3, Funny)
If you still refer to the Internet as "the big blue e" then you can not regulate it.
At least we have tor (Score:5, Interesting)
(Before I used it, I assumed it would be too slow to use. Boy was I wrong - I hardly even notice the difference in web browsing).
Re:At least we have tor (Score:2)
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
If terrorists are going to start using encryption, then encryption will be outlawed, except for government-approved encryption which will be crackable by the government. All encrypted data will be filtered and anything that can't be cracked or contains "hot words" will be flagged for further inspection. All other plaintext data will be only scanned for hot words. Any data that is encrypted with a non-approved encryption scheme will be automatically flagged and prosecuted.
And terrorists a
Re:Why? (Score:2)
This may be true for e-mail, but would you say it is true for credit card transactions with an https server as well? Or is that communication clearly an indication that you have something to hide because it is encrypted? You must be a terrorist because you did use encryption in some communication with bn.com.
Likewise if you are using a VPN to connect to your corporate headquarters t
Who Pays? (Score:2)
This is a case where the Bush administration had it right the first time. We have an economy that looks about as robust-looking as Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, All we need to do is load down one mo
nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:nothing new (Score:3, Interesting)
And at least Meth is a valid concern. Terrorism is not really much of a problem on US soil (compared to other forms of death), but crystal meth is huge and getting worse.
Re:nothing new (Score:2)
They not in other countries, they're temporarily annexing small bits of other nations... Get it straight. Granted the USA does do some nifty humanitarian work they burn any street credit they get when they start "liberation" efforts.
Though that said I don't get the politicians... I mean they have family and friends right? How long before a senators brother or something gets arrested under the new "Ultra Patriot Mega Act 2000" law which states that browsing the web
Re:nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure those responsible for the attacks in 2001 are laughing ther asses all the way to the bank.
Re:No actually, what the terrorists wanted was... (Score:3)
Actually, this is a misconstruing that is at the heart of a lot of the problems the US is now having with the rest of the world.
The Sep 11 attack wasn't on the American Trade Center; it was on the World Trade Center. Citizens of around 60 nations died in that attack.
When you claim that this was an attack on America or Americans, you are repeating the Bush administration's oft-stated attitude that the rest of those dead don't matter. They weren't Americans; they aren't relevan
Again with the child pornography (Score:3, Insightful)
OT: child pornography (Score:2)
"Investigators in the Clay Meron child porn case say his collection of computer images is the largest recovered in Atlantic Canada. An agreed statement of facts, entered into court on Tuesday, showed the 35-year-old had one computer hard drive containing 171,446 images. Police said 70 per cent were offensive images of children of all ages. There were an additional 1,931 video clips on the same hard drive." (
Re:OT: child pornography (Score:3, Insightful)
There may BE a lot of file traders, but log-trawling starts with an assumption that the majority of people must be guil
this won't work... (Score:2)
Even with complete record keeping and logging, this will at best permit traffic analysis, since E-mail and IM will increasingly rely on cryptography.
And so it begins...the end, that is. (Score:2)
I mean, what, you're not soft on childporn, are you? You don't want terrorist roaming around and using the internet without punity, do you?
If it's emotional and self-righteous enough, they know few will dare to oppose. Think of the children! Think o
Wow. (Score:2)
Appart from that, there's the civil liberties aspect. Why does the american government seem so hell-bent on relieving joe public from his rights? And why does no-one seem to realise that this kind
To think it unconstitutional = fooling yourself (Score:2)
ISPs and publicly-traded companies are not subject to the requirements set forth in the constitution. Those only apply to governments.
Those requirements would be immoral, but they are not unconstitutional. IANAL, so take that with a salt lick.
Re:To think it unconstitutional = fooling yourself (Score:3, Interesting)
How To Make Encryption Commonplace (Score:2)
No problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Back to the Roman Empire analogy (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm quite convinced that Karl Rove et al take the history of the Roman Empire very seriously in assessing how to preserve the special status of the American ruling class (=patricians.)
The point about the Roman Empire was that there was nowhere to hide for its citizens. The reason that, when accused of crimes, senators went off and committed suicide was that there was nowhere to escape to. This gave the people in power effectively total control.
In classical Rome, just like Elizabethan England, huge networks of paid informers ensured that the government knew what people were thinking. The result was that the upper classes could continue their internecine wars (i.e. kill one another) while knowing that the system that kept them, as a class, in power was secure. There was no risk that while they were slaughtering one another, the peasants would revolt. Of course, in Rome the emperor also had a private security force - but ultimate power was controlled by whoever had the support of the army. So one Imperial tactic was to keep the army as far away from Rome as possible fighting foreign wars.
Any similarities are purely coicidental.
It won't happen ... here's why (Score:3, Insightful)
Publicly traded firms do NOT have to keep email (Score:3, Informative)
Quantumly Entangled Internet (Score:3, Interesting)
At the same time I read about the experiment, apart from dreams of ansibles, I thought, hey, there's no way in hell for any third party to eavesdrop on two quantumly entangled particles.
Also in the news was Napster and Freenet, and I wondered if a person couldn't build an Internet using quantum entangled pairs that is totally immune from government intrusion.
Try to read our logs then, mofos!
I Work For an ISP (Score:3, Insightful)
Who is going to pay for the disk space to store all of these logs. we couldn't possibly afford to keep even a weeks worth of logs. We have 2 DS3's for upstreams, out of two POPs, you know how much bandwidth that uses?
Who is actually okay with the policy of sniffing the innocent in case they might do something wrong? Sorry, no, this is just more repbulican facsist bullshit. Anyone who believes this is a good idea clearly doesn't value freedom in any real sense.
Who is going to station armed guards in my network, to keep me from making it official company policy to kick the logging machines as you walk by them?
As an employee of an ISP, I can say we are unprepared to do this, we are unwilling to do this, and..... fuck the DOJ, this is just wrong.
I support logging all my packets... (Score:3, Funny)
...on a technical level.
They'd be storing this much information on me: http://www.google.com/search?q=6+million+per+secon d+*+1+month [google.com]
Which works out to about 1.80 TiB
And since hard drives are about $0.3875/GB,/ www.pricewatch.com/prc.aspx%3Fi%3D26%26a%3D4429 [pricewatch.com]
http://www.pricewatch.com/default.aspx?p=http%3A/
That means I'm getting an extra $714.24 value out of my $80 Comcast bill, or whatever they charge now.
And since I only watch my porn that I stream from the internet at H.264 1280p HD (5-6Mbps), caching the data on Comcast's servers is just as good as saving it on my own hard drive.
Now I already know what you're going to say:
To which I say:
Re:Log size? (Score:5, Insightful)
This beautifully refined process of slowly chipping away at our rights always begins like this. Figure out a way to kill this right now or you never will.
Re:Log size? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Divide the profit of an avarage large ISP by its amount of customers.
2. Calculate the cost of storing the avarage data throughput of a client per 3 months.
3. Be astonished on how many years of company profits will go into setting up this system.
4. Wonder how on earth you're going to search through such a huge data storage.
5. ?
6. Profit!
Re:Log size? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is plenty of technology to do this now. No need for storage improvement. They can get it now and they are likely to get it.
Re:Log size? (Score:2)
Re:hide your text (Score:5, Insightful)
The danger comes from not just the government, which is bad enough, considering the direction they are going -- no subpoenas, rooting through your life on fishing expeditions -- but from hostile parties using their proven insider connections to the ISPs and the government to conduct their own surveillance and destruction campaigns against targeted individuals.
Cults such as the Moonies and the Scientologists have shown that there is no limit to the means they will employ to destroy even the slightest criticism. They won't even have to leave the bunker with such data available. They can phone in disaster on their "enemies".
Journalists will have to live spotless lives to avoid being ruined by even the most casual search into their life's database, thus insuring the silence of the fourth estate -- even quieter than they are now.
Of course, the people who will utilize this data, government officials and the shadowy almost-governments such as cults, as well as the very wealthy and/or celebrated, will be immune to such searches, being largely anonymous in their activities. They'll make sure of that.
Make it bad for thier political careers (Score:4, Insightful)
If even half of the log files found are as embarrassing as I'm imagining then all of Washington would go into a buzz about protecting privacy.
Re:Log size? (Score:4, Insightful)
Never? Abusive dictatorships get violently overthrown at some point or another, how long it takes to be corrupted into another abusive dictatorship is a measure of the wisdom of the new system.
We are just following the age old cycle: Rebel, rinse, repeat.
Re:Log size? (Score:3, Interesting)
They are looking for needles?
Make BIGGER haystacks.
Tor, now than ever. [eff.org]
Re:Log size? (Score:3, Interesting)
This would accomplish two goals, increasing the amount of storage the ISPs would have to have and put so much noise in the logs that it would be hard to find anything that could be used as evidence.
As an additional bonus, it might be possible for users to store the data the spider finds and sell it to a search engin
Re:Slippery slope (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the world was not with us when we 'stopped it'. The UN declined to authorize the use of force. There were more nations in Bush's "Coalition of the willing" than there were in the attack agains Serbia
And there was no ethnic cleansing going on. Yes there were attrocities comitted, bhe mass graves that were used to sell the war to the American and European public never materialized.
Yes re
Simple way to get this shot down ... by the NRA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Simple way to get this shot down ... by the NRA (Score:3, Funny)
Jaysyn
Re:Log size? (Score:2)
It doesn't matter how expensive this stuff will be for ISPs. That will only get lip service as far as consideration goes.
The ISPs should be happy they aren't required to print out extensive DNS access / IP access / Caller ID / pop3+smtp logs and keep THOSE on file.
Re:Log size? (Score:5, Informative)
Some Dutch and English reading material can be found here http://www.ispo.nl/home/dossiers/bewaarplicht/ [www.ispo.nl].
What I want to know is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:glad i don't live in america (Score:5, Informative)
Well, it seems we don't have a monopoly on idiot pencil pushers. Quote from the article:
"France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Sweden jointly submitted their data retention proposal to the European Parliament in April 2004. Such mandatory logging was necessary, they argued, "for the purpose of prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of crime or criminal offenses including terrorism.""
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Idiot pencil pushers are everywhere (Score:2)
Big net companies that manage the Internet backbone already do some of this as part of the industrial espionage strategy (="We'll route your traffic for you but we also get too look at it").
Has this been used? (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember some discussions about how small an ISP you have to be to be free from these demands as it is a major expense and even worse for small ISP's.
I think the limit for this was set to 1000 customers here in Denmark, but I may remember this wrongly.
Does anyone know about these systems being used by the police etc. in the countries where this has been implemented?
Re:glad i don't live in america (Score:5, Informative)
Re:glad i don't live in america (Score:3, Interesting)
At the moment, systems are in please so that they can MONITOR everything that is sent out onto the network.
The article however, speaks of retaining the information, in other words storing everything.
I myself work for a hosting company: we host several websites (not much) internally, they generate a total of 18GB log files averaged per day! I cannot imagine storing them for years and ye
Re:Shadowy Motives (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why you should never allow the government to limit your freedom "a bit" because inevitably that "bit" will become full blown anal rape.
This guy knew what he was talking about...so did the rest of the guys that drafted the Constitution. It's too bad most of their wisdom is ignored today.Re:Shadowy Motives (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Shadowy Motives (Score:3, Insightful)
Gee, what word [reference.com] does that remind you of?
Re:ok (Score:3, Insightful)
Amendment IV - Search and seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Re:ok (Score:2)
Re:On a more positive note... (Score:2)
Hey, if Ah-nuld or Sly can do do it!
And most of our troops in Iraq seem to have one hand scratching their heads as to why they're there most of the time, so I guess they're shooting Iraqi civilians with the other.
And while hard drive costs will come down, you won't have anything to put on them because the porn sites will be charging five hundred a month for access due to their ISP costs of data storage and techs to admi
Re:Germany was moving the opposite way.. (Score:2)
Actually, according to quite a few Net rumors, the people we vote for are apparently involved in producing porn - kiddie porn at that.
I recently saw a LONG list of prominent Republicans throughout the country who were in past years officially charged with various forms of paedophilia, or other criminal behavior. I'm sure one could find an equal number of prominent Democrats if one went searching through court records, bu
Re:PEOPLE WHO CARE ABOUT "PRIVACY" ARE CRIMINALS! (Score:3, Interesting)
I assume that you have encryption turned on to keep bad people from hacking into your network and reading your PRIVATE data. Now, how good a job do you think your ISP is going to do of securing all of the logs of all of your activity?
Re:PEOPLE WHO CARE ABOUT "PRIVACY" ARE CRIMINALS! (Score:3, Interesting)
The fireman's "discount card" at that grocery store provided a record of his purchace of "Fire Starter" logs.
Yes it was arson, ** but ** it was another person that started the fire, not the fireman.
An inocent man was almost sent
Re:Anybody who assumes that privacy exists (Score:3, Insightful)