Michigan May Outlaw Anonymity Online

John Q .Public writes "The Detroit Free press is reporting in this article attempts by Law enforcement in Wayne County and the Michigan State Legislature to require ISP's doing business there to verify all e-mail addresses with valid phone numbers or credit cards. One free ISP already is willing to log all phone numbers for access by the police." That free ISP is K-Mart's BlueLight.com, which is just, in their words, "being a good corporate citizen." I'm sure they'll be very successful at identifying everyone except the criminals.

Comments

Bluelight isn't free anymore

[strredwolf]

Bluelight's getting out of the free ISP biz according to C|Net News.com. A notiable quote is this: "The free unlimited model is dead," said BlueLight.com spokesman Dave Karraker.

--
WolfSkunks for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";

yeah well.

[garcia]

even if *they* aren't it looks like other places have to agree too. Problem here is that just b/c an ISP has your # linked to an email doesn't mean it is going to solve anything...

Scary as it is...

[PhatKat]

it isn't going to do any good anyway.

How is access to information about the ISP going to be of any use if these guys are using anonymous remailers or even hotmail? How about hushmail? If these guys are using P2P encrypted anonymous email accounts to trade illegal materials, ISP information isn't really going to be of much use, is it?

I mean, good luck catching the people making ISP. I'm all for punishing child abusers, but this just isn't a very effective way of doing it.

This makes it even more dangerous

[bugnuts]

In fact, it's even more of a pain! If someone forges your account name and spams, you get a bunch of hate mail and have to put in a .procmailrc to send off a response saying "It wasn't me."

But in this scenario, if someone uses YOUR phone number on registration and does anything illegal, suddenly the jackboot thugs are kicking in your door. The affidavit for a search warrant is only as good as the information contained, and if you have to rely on an ISP for that info, it's easily subverted through misinformation or cracking. Essentially, it's making the ISP a witness with no ability to confront them and argue it except AFTER all your computer equipment has been confiscated.

They're screwed.

[perdida]

That's the end of the new economy, folks.

Now, it's just a digital piece of the old economy.

When I shop and communicate online, it is not more convenient than going to the store or making a phone call. It is sometimes faster, sometimes cheaper, and it is always more anonymous.

Let's say you want to order, say, satanic texts. You can go to the bookstore, but then your neighbors might see you do it. Especially if you are well known. If you go on the internet it might take 6 weeks, but nobody will see you do it. They might get a record of it, but you won't have to make any kind of public action, like going into an occult bookstore, that would make people even think to do it.

It's a situational, social kind of anonymity you get on the Internet.

Registration of every email address will destroy the avatars, the characters, the pirates, the trolls, and everybody else who uses situational, social anonymity.

Crime comes from anonymity, but so does creativity, innovation, and the courage to try new things. I know this from experience. :))

Re:They're screwed.

[coupland]

But... but... buying satanic texts is wrong! You shouldn't be allowed to do it because it offends me! What about my rights? Like my right to decide what you can and cannot read. My right to go through life without ever seeing or hearing an opposing view. My right to prevent you from seeing anything that I find offensive. It's always about you, isn't it?

---

What exactly are we trying to solve here?

[locutus074]

While I find the idea of kiddie porn as revolting and disgusting as the next person, this is simply going too far. The slippery-slope implications of something like this are enormous.

I wonder... is this really that much different from someone using an anonymous postal dropbox, and paying cash for it? If the MI police force gets their way, where will it end? I'm simply at a loss for words.

The Misanthropic Bitch has an interesting essay about why laws against child pornography are exactly like 1984 . Unfortunately, I feel that it's nearly impossible to have a civilized discussion about child pornography since emotions tend to run so high on this issue. "We have to do this for the children! Save the children! Won't somebody please think about the children?"

--

Re:What exactly are we trying to solve here?

[JWhitlock]

A little clarification: Having an anonymous postal dropbox is more restrictive than a anonymous internet account. There are Postal Inspectors whose sole job is to investigate crimes using the U.S. Mail, from fraud to child pornography.

A first-class letter comes with a guarentee of privacy, but, if they suspect you are doing something illegal, they can get a warrant to open your mail. Having an anonymous mailbox doesn't necessarily put you under suspicion, but the kind of mail you recieve (lots of legal-sized envelopes marked "photos, do not bend", or maybe lots of cash) may get you unwanted attention.

It would be ideal if we could create a similar system for the electronic world. Encrypted email with the legal protections of first-class mail would be useful, although it may have to be a three-key system, so the government could open email with a warrent, without the sender knowing of it. This may ring some warning bells on SlashDot, but it's better than your boss being able to read every piece of email you send, or the government reading all the un-encrypted email with Carnivore (or whatever they are calling it this week).

Need for national standards

[shadrax]

I was a little taken aback that a large ISP changed its policies because of "Wayne County Sheriff Robert Ficano's Internet crime task force." First of all, it shows how much we can trust corporations on privacy. But there's another issue.

Should those of us not in Wayne County be affected by its law enforcement measures? Of course not--they're not accountable to the rest of Americans. These issues should be resolved by nationally elected officials (if they're dealt with at all). I don't think that this could ever withstand national scrutiny; they'd be forced to deal with the real issues of privacy that are so casually dismissed in Wayne County.

For that matter, questions of anonymity online might be best dealt with by an international commission (for uniformity in dealing with supoened server logs, etc.). Of course, considering how much stricter European privacy laws are, that would be bad news for the FBI. I somehow doubt the USA is likely to listen to the rest of the world, but at the very least we should not let a few vigilantes in Wayne County set our privacy policy.

because everyone has a phone number, right?

[lupa]

now, i'm all for finding and busting child pornographers, but this statement was ridiculous:

"This has nothing to do with free speech, but everything to do with giving law enforcement the tools they need to do their job in the information age."

how in the world do they justify saying that this has nothing to do with free speech? free services that do not require credit cards or phone numbers make email accessible to people who, through one reason or another, might not have *either.* but those people are not criminals and shouldn't be punished just because some fiend out there happens to use the same service. i know a squatter in ann arbor with no phone who needs to have an email address - is she now going to be cut off because of the short sightedness of law enforcement officials?

it is also relatively pointless to attempt to track user information to get to child pornographers, since REAL childporn mongerers have very well developed aliases and can hide in a ton different ways - a fake address, phone number, or credit card number can be provided.

too bad the law is just too blind to see where they're messing up.

What we need -- Pre Payed

[DoorFrame]

What we need is something that I've only seen mentioned about other countries a couple of times (mostly in connection with one of the infamous virus writers) is pre-payed ineternet cards, similar to pre-payed phone cards. You go to the local K-Mart (oops, make that Walmart) and pick up a card good for 100 hours of Internet time. You're given a dialup number, a username and a password... all good for 100 hours. After that time you buy another card.

Thegreat thing about this is, no names. They don't have your name, they don't have your credit card number, they don't have your address, they don't have you SS#; they don't have anything. The only problem with it is that they can still, if they want to, track your phone number using caller ID. I suppose a legal solution to this (assuming we're not into Blue Boxes here) is to simply call the phone company and ask for that twenty dollars a month (or whatever the fee is) service which blocks caller ID from identifying your phone. Or, if you want, you can do it for free by dialing *67. And hell, since it's your computer dialing every time, not you, you can simply add it the beginning of the dialup number the first time and forget it.

Instant quasi anonymous internet usage. The flaw is that the ISPs could, if they wanted, not accept phone calls from blocked customers... but why would they bother?

Re:What we need -- Pre Payed

[Cyberdyne]

Instant quasi anonymous internet usage. The flaw is that the ISPs could, if they wanted, not accept phone calls from blocked customers... but why would they bother?

In the UK, this is already the case: the inappropriately named "Freeserve" offers pay-as-you-go Net access, funded by the call charges, with online signup. They don't actually block anonymous calls - but if you withhold Caller ID, you can't post on Usenet or send e-mail. (SMTP and WWW access are transparently proxied, too, to enforce this.) So you could post anonymously on Slashdot, for example - but their proxy would log the posting, and they'd then be able to tie that posting back to your 'phone number.

Fortunately, in the US, there is a specific legal precedent that anonymity is guaranteed under the First Amendment - not sure if it's Supreme Court or not, though. Any attempt by law enforcement should be doomed on these grounds, if nothing else!

Having said that, the ISP is allowed to log whatever they want - you just need to find a slightly more reasonable ISP, capable of respecting some of your rights...

Re:What we need -- Pre Payed

[Robert A. Heinlein]

I suppose a legal solution to this (assuming we're not into Blue Boxes here) is to simply call the phone company and ask for that twenty dollars a month (or whatever the fee is) service which blocks caller ID from identifying your phone. Or, if you want, you can do it for free by dialing *67. And hell, since it's your computer dialing every time, not you, you can simply add it the beginning of the dialup number the first time and forget it.

Caller-ID != ANI
Caller-ID != ANI
Caller-ID != ANI

I need a chanting midi to load with this post.

Lots of people here have the misconception that the phone network works something like the Internet. Very few similarities. Provisions for billing are built in to telephone switching and signaling. The signaling system is not accesible to users, so unless you are dealing with very old equipment your {color}box won't work.

Wish I had some online resources to educate you people, but I can suggest you peruse a copy of Greg Black's "ISDN and SS7".

-schreeech- thump thump..

[kaoshin]

There's a bluelight special on identity rape. Bring your credit cards and phone numbers to ailse nine. Ash, you're needed in housewares.

does it matter now that free isps are dying out?

[soldack]

BlueLight is out of that business and others are dying off or starting to charge. The fact is, free ISPs are learning what a lot of free web sites are learning. They are learning that it is tough to get all the revenue you need from internet advertising. Unless you are really big (CNN, Yahoo) you can't charge enough. Without the expensive software, services, and ad network that somone like RealMedia's OpenAdStream or DoubleClick provide it is difficult to make money selling internet ads. Your only hope is to have a great programming staff and ad sales people. Most companies are unable to create these necessities due to stupidity or lack of funds or both. This throws you back into the arms of Internet advertising companies. If you finally don't have money for them, you are screwed.
I think that the free internet will explode again when consumer bandwidth increases. When the average user has a 500Kb/s connection, the possiblities open up. This includes the advertising possiblities. I think that large interactive ads will be thrown in the way of the information the user wants, forcing them to sit through it. No ignoring the banners. More sites will use in house based ad servers to work around ad blocking software (block the ad, block the story). Articles will be unreachable without going through the ads. This type of advertising will bring success rates closer to television ads and thus raise rates and bring back the financial feasiblity of free internet businesses.

America: The Sodom of free-speech and anonymity?

[screwballicus]

In other anti-liberal alarmist news: Ban streets! They're used, every day, by child pornographers to seek out underage prostitutes. Even now, as I write this, at least two child prostitutes are being abused via the medium of the public roadway, where they sell their service. Since the new "road" technology was introduced, a couple millennia ago, pedophelia has boomed, adopting the (not particularly informational) "superhighway" as its home. Unless we eliminate all roadways and sidewalks, there'll be no way to stop pedophiles from seeking out new victims. Advocation of free, anonymous access to roads is advocation of pedophelia, itself. Road and Sidewalk licenses will make America a happier, safer society. When the police take your mugshot, finger prints and name every time you walk outside your house, you'll know that your safe from the scourge of pedophelia, that public walkways so readily propagate.

Please, make it stop...

[coupland]

> "These free services can be a haven for child pornographers."

I'm bad at math. Can someone please help me? Have I transcribed a digit wrong in the following equation:

Free e-mail = child pornography

I've done some simple regression analysis based on the above and have derived some more formulas that may be of interest to the population at large. They include:

cars = drunk driving
parents = child abuse
video games = 13-year-old killing machines

Please, spread the word. The math just works!.
---

Re:Stop being paranoid people

[lupa]

the kicker is NOT tracking the activity via weblogging or some other fashion. the kicker in the law is this:

"The legislation that Brown plans to sponsor would require all ISPs doing business in Michigan to obtain a valid and verified credit card or telephone number at the time of registration and to hold on to that data for at least one year."

suddenly they have addresses, credit reports, etc. tracking a telephone number or access location means nothing if you're dialing in from an internet cafe somewhere in hohokus. and this effectively restricts truly poor people from having viable access.

Constitutionality??

[www.sorehands.com]

Since most ISPs operate interstate, I'm not sure if one state can regulate them.

I was under the impression that anonymous communication is not an absolute right. It is a right such as privacy which have are limits. That is why, in the USA there are threshold requirements for search warrants. Recently a judge in Penn. set requirements for the release of user identification information -- similar to the requirements of a restraining order.

Anonymous communications allow you to speak out without fear of retribution, but it should not shield you from illegal activity. But then, the issue of what is illegal, talking bad about a communist government is illegal in that country, but not in another.

Linking a telphone number to a email account is not always effective. Who says that phone number has to belong to the person? Airport lounges, dealership witing rooms all have phones for people to use. What if the person sets up the account from a friends house? BTW> Hotmails sends the originiating IP with each email.

Re:Constitutionality??

[coyote-san]

Since most ISPs operate interstate, I'm not sure if one state can regulate them.

Unless there's Federal law which supercedes this (which I doubt), the Michigan law will only apply to Michigan users. ISPs then face four alternatives:

1) The ISP ignores the law and tries to force the issue into court.

2) The ISP tells Michigan users that their service is terminated, effective immediately, until they elect some representatives with some common sense. Anomynity protects child molesters, but it also protects whistle-blowers, rape and other crime victims, even witnesses to crimes or people providing information about dangerous suspects and escapees.

3) The ISP decides to collect this information from Michigan users only... which is a bit problematic since it requires the users to identify themselves in order to determine if the users need to identify themselves. Maybe they could get around this catch-22 by only collecting this information when the "set up" call comes from Michigan. Since this option requires the most work, it's the least likely.

4) The ISP decides to collect this information nationwide... and prays that they never run into a set of laws that are mutually exclusive.

As for the issue of anonymous communications, there was an important case a few years ago where a man challenged the right of (LA?) police to stop him and demand identification while he was peacefully walking down the street. The Supreme Court ruled (unanimously?) that the police do <b>not</b> have the right to demand people to identify themselves unless there is some specific reason to suspect criminal activity. (Before you ask, the situation is slightly different if you're operating a vehicle. Drivers have to identify themselves, passengers have mixed rights.)

Another point to consider is that club membership is protected by the First Amendment. Racists were not able to get the membership lists to the NAACP in the 50s, and the Southern Poverty Law Center (?) was not able to get the membership list to the KKK (or a similiar group) a few years ago. Many small ISPs are actually communities that also happen to provide internet access and their membership information would be highly protected.
(Think rape victims, battered spouses, AA recovery groups, even environmentalists who discuss political rallies.) This is not absolute protection, but it's easy to see how the Michigan law could be "improved" in a few years to require each ISP to provide lists of users to police on a yearly basis... and that would clearly violate the rights of community-based ISPs.

I don't think there's any doubt that requiring people identify themselves, on the behalf of the police, while signing up for internet access will be found unconstitutional. An ISP can certainly make this demand on its own behalf, e.g., to ensure payment for services or in an attempt to avoid problems with known spammers, but many ISPs serve communities where such considerations are secondary.

Re:Constitutionality??

[www.sorehands.com]

Since most ISPs operate interstate, I'm not sure if one state can regulate them. Unless there's Federal law which supercedes this (which I doubt), the Michigan law will only apply to Michigan users. ISPs then face four alternatives:

States also can't create/enforce laws that will put undue burden upon out of state business. Ie. having an additional gas tax on highways near the state border. Why do you think credit card companies issue credit cards in states that allow high interest rates?

Misleading story title

[psychosis]

If you read the article, you'll see that the legislation is proposed. The title of the slashdot story implicates that the law has already been passed, and there is no time to avoid it.
If you are not happy with this, don't just rant on a discussion board - write your congresspeople - state and national - and let them know your feelings. If you don't want to support "the man" with a 34-cent stamp, they all have email addresses, linked from the US Congress page.
A little more discretion in the story titles could save a lot of hot, uninformed comments. (For those who don't bother to read the article, that is! ;)

Re:Misleading story title

[psychosis]

The story title was originally "MI to outlaw anonymity online". It appears to have been changed since my post.

*sigh*

[RESPAWN]

Well, this just makes me glad that I don't live in Michigan. However, if a law such as this were to pass it could set a dangerous precedent that other states will follow. I personally like the certain amount of anonimity that the internet affords, and I really don't want some law enforcement official to know that it was me who accessed the Natalie Portman Grits pr0n site.

Tracking people online is rathe similar to a police officer tailing you around out in the real world. Do police tail everybody in the real world, watching their every move to see if they are committing a crime? Of course not. The only tail the criminals or suspected criminals. So, why should it be any different online? Why should they be allowed to track everybody online. As the news post said, this law will most likely just identify everybody except for the criminals. This law sucks. If you live in Michigan I urge you to write your state legislature expressing your displeasure at such a law.

Geez... Next thing you know we'll be living in the UK where they screen all communications and insurance companies use genetic testing. ;)

--------------------------------------

Not going to happen..

[snellac]

That's the end of the new economy, folks.

Now, it's just a digital piece of the old economy.

When I shop and communicate online, it is not more convenient than going to the store or making a phone call. It is sometimes faster, sometimes cheaper, and it is always more anonymous.

Let's say you want to order, say, satanic texts. You can go to the bookstore, but then your neighbors might see you do it. Especially if you are well known. If you go on the internet it might take 6 weeks, but nobody will see you do it. They might get a record of it, but you won't have to make any kind of public action, like going into an occult bookstore, that would make people even think to do it.

It's a situational, social kind of anonymity you get on the Internet.

Registration of every email address will destroy the avatars, the characters, the pirates, the trolls, and everybody else who uses situational, social anonymity.

Crime comes from anonymity, but so does creativity, innovation, and the courage to try new things. I know this from experience. :))

Good.

[Denial of Service]

As much as I'm sure all of you honest, law-abiding citizens loathe such a plan, the sad fact is that it's a bi-product of our zero accountability society. Sure, nobody likes the potential for having movement tracked, but perhaps it's a step in the right direction, because a quick look around is sure to find that we are degrading into a sea of blamelessness that will kill our "civilized" society faster than any other threat.

Think I'm trolling? Just look at some of the absolutely lame excuses people use to avoid being accountable. Don't give me any of this freedom of speech rhetoric either, because everyone with an ounce of sense knows that utter freedom is a disaster within a group of people as accustomed to lying, cheating and stealing without pennance as the first world countries of this planet have become. In this world, you give anyone from a snot-nosed kid to snot-nosed adult an inch and they will be most sure to take it ten miles.

What it boils down to is that things are reaching a point where overly restrictive and intrusive snooping mechanism is a borderline necessity as a way of yanking the chain of those who screw everyone else endlessly without repercussions because the mashed potato legal system in any developed nation allows it to happen time and time and time again. Considering the choir I'm currently preaching to, I have no doubt that any responses to this will contain the words "Nazi", "Orwellian" or "fascist", but I'm so fucking sick of having my house and car vandalized (as an example) by people who know goddamn well that being caught red-handed carries absolutely no penalty that I'm willing to sacrifice a certain measure of freedom in the short term in order to get a good night's sleep. If you want someone to blame for the repeated attempts to compromise small pieces of your supposed freedom, I encourage you to look directly in the mirror.

---

Re:Good.

[Steve B]

As much as I'm sure all of you honest, law-abiding citizens loathe such a plan, the sad fact is that it's a bi-product of our zero accountability society.

Yes; it's a by-product of a system that does not punish politicians and bureaucrats when they violate the rights of citizens.

If the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, why aren't legislators who pass un-Constitutional laws in prison?
/.

I'm OK with this

[Phroggy]

Let me say that I for one am OK with this, as long as the information is not used for anything except:

A) for non-free ISPs, if I don't pay my bill, they should be able to contact me, and if it goes to a collection agency, that agency should also be able to contact me

B) the information can be released to the authorities with a subpoena

It must NOT EVER be sold to ANY third party, or otherwise be made available to ANYONE.

The idea here is that it's easier to track down people who do break the law. If you aren't breaking the law, then only your own ISP has the information, which I don't think is unreasonable at all.

--

no email?

[myspys]

so, if i haven't got an e-mail address i can't use the internet? hum. or the other way around, if i don't have a phone i can't use the internet? !nerds are weirdos.

Most ISP's are already tracking your phone number

[alteridem]

The radius protocol allows the logging of the CSID (calling station ID - your phone number) along with the IP address you are given and your username. This information is sent to the radius servers after you have been authenticated and are connected to a dialup session, and then logged. Collecting and logging this information is the default configuration for most radius servers and NAS's (network access servers - modem pools.)

It is important that most ISP's collect this information because it is the only way to track you down if you are doing something illegal or against their usage policy (such as spam.) We whine about spam enough on slashdot, but the only way for ISP's to cut off the users is to prove from these logs that they were the ones that did it. Yes, this information could be used for more sinister purposes, but so could your phone records, credit card purchases, etc.

Free ISP's have an even tougher time though because if they cut off a spammer, the spammer will just create another free account and continue with their game. The only way to stop this is to require some identifying information from the user so that it is more difficult to create multiple accounts when one is shut down. A credit card is a natural choice because it can be verified.

Once again, the potential for abuse exists, but most ISP's these days also have your credit card information (from when you paid) which they can easily match up with the other information I mentioned previously. So, in the end, is it that different than what is already going on? And what do you expect from a FREE ISP? You need to pay for it somehow, and often that is through your demographic information. If you don't like it, go to another ISP and pay cash, you have a choice.

Loss of Anonymity would be fine, IF...

[trims]

Fundamentally, there is no requirement for anonymity on the Net, If you can guarranty three conditions:

1. For certain services that have a clear, defined need for anonymity (such as whistleblower and crime-tips hotlines) can offer it, and have it backed up by force of law. That is, if I set up a site that promises anonymity in one of these defined categories, there should be no way (legal or technical) to get at my identity, and any attempt to get it is illegal.
2. Information about individuals is considered private property, and cannot be sold or distributed without the explicit consent of the individual. Note that collection should be allowed - but the only thing that should be allowed to done with it is for private use by the company collecting it (or for use by law enforcement). Companies should never (even in bankruptcy) be allowed to sell customer databases.
3. Email and similar technologies (Instant Messaging) should be afforded the same protections US Mail is: that is, it can only be monitored with a supoena. You could monitor a chat room (since that's considered a public forum), but not sniff IMs between people. And none of this "we'll collect all email, but only look at what we have a supoena for" crap. Law enforcement has to get the supoena, THEN they can put in the monitor, and ONLY collect info about the supoena'd person.

Removing anonymity can be a large benefit to everyone (not just law enforcement), as it creates a much greater threshold of responsibility that is lacking now (and, in my opinion, is very, very bad). But before we do it, you have to guarranty that the beneficial purposes of anonymity aren't going to be lost. Until I see legal bills proposing the above, I'm not interested in people's ideas that we outlaw anonymity. It's a package deal - you want to get rid of (most) anonymity? Give me those rights. Otherwise, no deal.

-Erik

Re:hmm

[British]

I know the dialin lines for the university of minnesota had the opportunity for ANI when they did their upgrade several years ago. *67 doesn't block that. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Re:Need for international standards?

[A Masquerade]

For that matter, questions of anonymity online might be best dealt with by an international commission (for uniformity in dealing with supoened server logs, etc.). Of course, considering how much stricter European privacy laws are, that would be bad news for the FBI. I somehow doubt the USA is likely to listen to the rest of the world, but at the very least we should not let a few vigilantes in Wayne County set our privacy policy.

Readng this as a European and someone who has worked for (even setup) a very large ISP, I am a little amused by this. EU data protection legislation is indeed considerably stricter than US legislation (if indeed there is any US equivalent in most cases). However EU access for the LEAs (Law Enforcement Authorities) is probably considerably more liberal - maybe its just better codified.

Take an example like Freeserve - the largest UK ISP, based mostly on a pay-as-you-go model (ie call charges). To be able to use anything other than the most basic access you must disclose (or specifically not withhold), the telephone number you are calling from (this is passed to the ISPs equipment by the telco unless you specifically configure your equipment to withhold it). All mail (at least all SMTP sessions) is forced through the ISP mail servers and hence logged (this was apparently bought in as an anti-spam measure and is effective in that spam from this ISP is negligable compared to many of the smaller competitors).

The T&Cs and privacy policy mention Freeserve.com reserves the right to access and disclose individually identifiable information to comply with applicable laws and lawful government requests, to operate its systems properly or to protect itself or its users.

So the EU may have stronger data protection, but there is a well defined process that any LEA can request this sort of data about anyone if they can come up with approriate requirements and convince the people who issue the papers to obtain this information. It also appears, for example, that web logs, which are caught by the transparent proxy caches, would also count as traffic data and so be very easy for an LEA to request

Is this a bad thing... I've tended to assume that controlled LEA access to basic data is a norm, and so find it strange when US people go orbital about this, but are quite happy about companies selling the stuff off for money with no controls... I guess its a cultural issue to some extent

Personally, with due process and control I am happy about the EU situation, although the LEAs (especially in the UK), do try and push things too far in their favour

Hold on a sec...

[Anonymous Coward]

Before everyone gets alarmist, let's look at it from the other perspective - what benefits would traceability bring? With freedom comes responsibility. If you say something bad about someone in real life that's not true, then you get sued for libel/slander. Thus, in real life, I have the ability to defend my reputation if you slag me off. On the internet, at present, I don't. In real life, if you distribute abusive material, you get tracked down and arrested. Why should the internet be any different? Just think of all the benefits that would come with knowing that anything you posted on the 'net could be traced back to you. Spamming would become a thing of the past. Some well-known cases of identity theft on newsgroups would never have happened. Junk mail - bye bye. Pirated games - syonara. Suddenly, everyone gets the credit they deserve, or the bad rep they deserve. Everything becomes fair again. All you have to give up to get this is your anonymity. If you're not doing anything wrong, you've got no worries there anyway. If you are, too bad. I don't understand why people feel they have the right to freedom and the right to anonymity. Remember, with freedom comes responsibility. ...He said, in an anonymous posting. :-)

Why do you always have to go with the disclaimer?!

[tester13]

It seems that, every time the subject of pedophiles is raised, everyone must preface their statements with: "I loath pedophiles as much as the next, but..." What do we gain from announcing this? We absolutely should not explain our right to privacy in these terms! We should stop distinguishing ourselves from criminals all the time. We are law abiding citizens who shouldn't have to beg for our rights! It only demeans our position to do so.

It's time to outlaw doorlocks

[Anonymous Coward]

Child pornographers are known to hide their evil deeds behind locked doors. Have you ever seen child pornography happening out in public? No! That's because they're at home, safely locked behind evil, evil deadbolt locks where they do unspeakable things. It's time for law enforcement to crack down on the evil doorlock industry for supporting the child pornography industry, and the people who traffic in these tools of the child pornography trade.

What can we do?

1) Write you legislator and ask for law to outlaw the manufacture and trade in doorlocks.

2) Boycott all hardware stores where doorlocks are sold. Be nice about it. Tell them why you are boycotting them, and explain how, by trafficking in doorlocks, they are unwittingly furthering the torture of children, and the destruction of children's lives.

3) Park yourself near the checkout line of said hardware stores, and anytime you see someone headed toward the checkout with a doorlock point at them and, very loudly, shout "Child molester! Child molester! He's got a doorlock!" If they procede with their purchase, follow them into the parking lot shouting the same. Then follow them home, get their address and publish it in the local newspaper and on the web. That should stop them.

4)Start keeping list of everyone you know that uses doorlocks. Ask them what they have to hide.

5)And while we're at it, we need to do away with that Fourth Ammendment thingie, too.

Court Precedents Say... ***BZZZZTTTT***!

[Steve B]

Given that there are several Supreme Court precedents upholding the right to speak anonymously, how can they possibly expect this to survive challenge?
/.

Why did you think it was PEDophilia?

[coyote-san]

Why did you think it was called PEDophilia, just like PEDestrians?

The Wayne County Sheriffs are Asses.

[Throw Away Account]

At least the rest of you in the country don't have to constantly hear about its damned "Internet Crime Task Force", which has 40-year-old deputies online pretending to be 14-year-old nymphomaniacs in order to lure people to Wayne County in order to arrest them.

Every single time they succeed, the TV news trumpets their efforts to "protect your children" to the rooftops, never pointing out how unlikely it is that there are real 14-year-olds out there making arrangments to meet 30 year old out-of-state men they've never seen and never have talked to at hotels for sex...

Re:The Wayne County Sheriffs are Asses.

[Throw Away Account]

Oh, BTW, while they're busy doing this, Detroit (which is within Wayne County) has not only a higher murder rate than Chicago (or NYC, or LA), but more total murders per year than the much larger Chicago.

Anonymity is our protection

[hooded1]

People are entirely valid when they accuse anonymity of protecting criminals. However, its protection is not merely limited to the socially unconscious, it also applies to the thousands of people, who can voice their opinions without fear of violent retribution. Although, the United States constitution does not grant us the freedom of anonymity, it does gaurantee us the right to speech and the right to live without fear. If these rights can only be protected, by allowing citizens to remain nameless than so be it. Until the rise of the internet such anonymity was nearly impossible, being published in a newspaper or magazine could be difficult if your views deviated from that of the publisher. In breaking that sort of freedom you are approaching a complete breech of our rights and freedoms as American Citizens

I never thought

[Pope Slackman]

ISP anonymity was a given, anyway.
Using my IP address, timestamp, and a warrant,
the Man can usually 'convince' my ISP to backtrace the IP to a name.

However, there are tools that can provide a decent level of anonymity:

Freedom - Privacy for everyone. Easy to use, relatively fast, and the Linux client is open source.
Based in Canada so Carnivore shouldn't be a problem.

SafeWeb - SSL surfing proxy, so your lan-mates/ISP can't snoop on your traffic.

Anonymous Remailers - MixMaster remailers can provide a very good level of email anonymity.
I don't have a link, but info is pretty easy to find.

There are tons more, these are just a few well-known tools.

--K

Re:I'm sorry, but

[Robert A. Heinlein]

Yeah, you are sorry aren't you.

You have to take this kind of crap seriously. Be offended by the stupity displayed by the "journalist" who would say something like:

Child pornographers are hiding behind untraceable free Internet

Anyone who has worked at an ISP probably realizes how easy it is to get information on users. Law enforcement is just tired of those pesky warrants and due process and privacy protections. Don't the bleeding hearts and liberty freaks understand what a dangerous, nasty world we live in?

The dream of law enforcement agencies would allow unreasonable search and seizure of httpd logs, radius logs, nfr logs, and anything else they might like to throw into the pot.

The forces of anti-privacy have offered up hackers and pornographers as reasons to give up privacy. I am just afraid that they will be bright enough to use spammers and pull in some of you people.

None of you would be complaining...

[rebelcool]

if this were touted as a measure to stopping spam.

Think about that for a minute.

Re:Stop being paranoid people

[Robert A. Heinlein]

That information already exists. What is unacceptable here is a policy that makes the information available to law enforcement for the asking. ISPs need to require a valid warrant for any invasion of the privacy of their users.

Information obtained from the ISP in this manner will be the start of evidence collection. If it is cheap for the police to get "good starts" for data mining they are going to able consider the desire to be left alone as probable cause, and let the data collection geeks sort out who is guilty of something. If you ever use encryption for anything (PGP, ssh, ssl) they might just put a watch your unencrypted traffic (IM, http, ftp, irc) for a bit.

The only thing protecting your privacy at this point is the sheer bulk of mostly meaningless data. The police cannot snoop everything, but if you fit an interesting statistic you might be snooped as a matter of course.

I work with authentication and accounting systems for a living. If anything, we need laws specifically preventing ISPs from releasing or using the data that is already being collected.

Let's hear it for NetZero.

[jcr]

Kudos to NetZero for not complying with an unreasonable demand from a jackbooted thug.

Time for the good citizens of Michigan to vote that asshole out of office.

-jcr

Re:does it matter now that free isps are dying out

[Robotech_Master]

Actually, Bluelight is still in that business, at least so far--however, they've cut back to a limit of 25 hours per month, and seem to be trying frantically to redefine themselves as the e-tailing heir to K-mart's prior incarnation of kiosk shopping, K-mart Solutions. The K-mart store where I work part-time as a cashier has these "Bluelight.com is now limited to 25 hours per month" signs plastered all over the place.

Of course, this was really only to be expected from K-mart, which tries to have "family friendly" as its middle name. Note that K-mart also promised to start carding for mature-rated computer games last October. (I don't know whether it actually does or not, as I haven't had any mature-rated video games come through my line since then. K-mart seems to card for just about everything else, though--alcohol, cigarettes, lighters, lighter fluid, non-tobacco imitation cigarettes and snuff--that's right, you have to be over 18 to buy shredded mint leaves!--knives, tire irons, even wheel ramps and cans of fix-a-flat--we can't have a little kiddie inflate someone to death, can we?--and so forth.)
--

Michigan = Scotland?

[front]

As an Irish citizen, married to a US citizen who was born and bred in Michigan, I have had an outside, yet extra-USA, interest in this State for a few years.

Michigan seems to me to be the most polarised State in the Union: Democrat yet Republican, WASP yet Afro-American, Conserative yet Liberal... it all exits in Michigan.

Klck-klack, klick-klack... the switch is thrown back and forth.

In the 1980's in Britain the Prime Minister, known as Thatcher, used Scotland as a testing ground for social programmes (Poll Tax).

Has Michigan become the "litmus test" State?

Do Michiganders feel that they are being used to test social policies and issues (concealed-carry of firearms as one example) so the Federal government can determine what goes right and wrong in the big picture? Are the corporations (and their legal depts.) following suit?

cheers

front

Poorly planned by Wayne County cops.

[ahfoo]

Of course this is an important issue from the standpoint of individual liberty, but that's not where this plan will fail if it goes through.
These cops are fools or totally bored if they want to become the complaint department for the Internet. Every home user who adopts a firewall for the first time and then starts going through the log files and gets all freaked out is going to start calling them and demanding to know why so and so is "hacking" me and it's your responsibility to arrest this sonofabitch.
On the other side, they'll have somebody running some little app they downloaded off a security site six months ago and totally forgot about who's gonna swear up and down they don't know what this guy is talking about becuase they really don't.
Multiply above times --oh, say ten thousand.
If these silly cops think they've got the man hours to sort that stuff out then maybe they've got too many heads on the payroll. Fact is, cops are like counselors in most situations and they always have to respond to the loudest complainer. If this goes through, they're gonna get a major earful and it's undoubtedly going to result in otherswise needless and potentially violent diputes that they are going to be essentially powerless to resolve. While not being of much assistance, the cops will be highly capable of aggravating the circumstances by bringing the image of armed officers into the fray, thus heightening the paranoia of the conflicting parties who are already feeling defensive because they don't really know the strength of their own arguments.
That's why this isn't going to be implemented for long even if it does pass through the legislature.

Feh

[Greyfox]

If I wanted to say something anonymously, I'd bounce it through a remailer chain in no less than 4 different countries. Fucking K-Mart isn't going to be able to stop (or track) that.

Not that I'd be caught dead getting my Internet service from K-Mart anyway.

KMart has always sucked at the fountain of fascism

[gelfling]

First it was make a new bunch of CDs with all the naughty words removed, now this. Gee can't imagine them not selling guns though that would be unamurrican.

Anonymous rights

[hrieke]

Whoa. Someone out there is stepping in the cow dung rather foolishly.
Case study :
http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate/constitu tion/amdt1.html ...Talley v. California,\166\ the Court struck down an ordinance which banned all handbills that did not carry the name and address of the author, printer, and sponsor; conviction for violating the ordinance was set aside on behalf of one distributing leaflets urging boycotts against certain merchants because of their employment discrimination. The basis of the decision is not readily ascertainable. On the one hand, the Court celebrated anonymity. ``Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind. Persecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize oppressive practices and laws either anonymously or not at all . . . . [I]dentification and fear of reprisal might deter perfectly peaceful discussion of public matters of importance.'
Someone should have these people write out 10,000 times the Constitution

the people's net

[soldack]

Gotta agree that that is a distinct possiblity. It really seems the net is being driven towards TV and vice versa. I hope that some parts of the good old net survive but I don't know if it is possible. With respect to your home net, I worry that ISPs are going to continue to limit upstream bandwidth for residential customers to force them into expensive commercial contracts to run servers. AFAIK, @Home has a limit of around 100kb/s for their cable modem service. What is to stop them from dropping it to something like 28.8? Yikes! I used to run a site off of a digital 56kb connection. It sucked...two or four modems (in those days speeds) could max it out.

Cable Modem Upstream

[billstewart]

The cable companies have a technology problem - their transmission methods provide lots more bandwidth downstream than upstream, so they need to do something to prevent the upstream from getting swamped by people running big servers, Napster, or other heavy transmitters from home. Newer equipment lets them limit to 128 kbps upstream; the older stuff was something like 768kbps, so they managed upstream by annoyingly heavy-handed "Don't do anything Server-Like" usage policies and providing customers with small home page capabilities off their servers. What they desparately need to get more business is for people to develop the killer apps for home always-on users, and a content/protocol-based policy is much more likely to prevent that than a bandwidth-based policy.

By contrast, modems are symmetric, and the upstream network infrastructure beyond the dial POPs uses symmetric capabilities, so modem ISPs don't have that problem.

Disclaimer: If this were corporate policy, I'd be wearing a suit and tie instead of a t-shirt.