Slashdot Mirror
DOJ Wants ISPs to Log User Traffic UPDATED
Anonymous Coward writes "Kevin Poulson writes in an article in
SecurityFocus that in an early draft of the
White House's "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace", the DOJ proposes that the US
enact European style 'data retention' laws,
which force ISPs to log and retain all of your
email headers, as well as your Web browsing
history." Nothing worse for the DOJ to be upstaged by Europe in oppressive lawmaking, they must feel like they're losing their edge. Update: 06/19 23:04 GMT by M : The SecurityFocus article has been updated with this note, saying that the U.S. denies having any plans for data-retention laws. Guess we'll have to wait until the plan is released to see.
Article seems slashdotted, so I haven't read it yet... but what does this mean for those of us who run our own mail servers? Do we know have retention and reporting requirements on our systems at home?
Does anyone know if using anonymous web surfing services, like Anonymizer or COTSE, will help, with their URL encryption? Of course, this won't fix the problem of e-mail headers, but it might keep flags from being raised when you visit a "hacker" site, or some other "suspect" material on the web.
I think the appropriate answer to the DoJ is "Give us a big enough pipe, we'll forward the data to you, and you can archive the hell out of it if you like."
Drown them in their own sauce. Before long, they'll be telling all the ISPs in the country "UNCLE!"
If nothing else, we'll get a BIG increase in the capacity of the Internet backbone before it's all over. Note for the humor-impaired: This suggestion is a joke. I think the bozo at DoJ who proposed this should be fired/recalled for constitutional abuse of power for even suggesting this.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
Besides which, what defines an ISP? I do work for a school that shares an Internet line with a nearby company; the router is in the school, and the company can use the school's cache server and mail relay. Does the school have to log everything? They certainly can't pay for it.
Then again, if the government would provide cash for some upgrades, I'm sure they wouldn't mind.
This is only slightly different than forcing telcos to retain phone records, with one exception.
Many URL's can be used to guess WHAT data you've been looking at without actually looking at the website. For example, if someone saw the URL: http://www.nakedkids.com they would assume that it was child porn and whomever looked at it should be red-flagged and investigated. Quite possibly however this site could have NOTHING to do with porn and could simply have a questionable DNS name.
Perhaps if ISPs were only allowed to track IP addresses....
Even if the DoJ were to keep a log of your web browsing, who's to say it was you sitting at the keyboard?
I can see people making scripts to go to all sorts of "undesireable sites", and when they get busted, they can prove they were nowhere near the computer at the time.
Would also smoke out all sorts of surveillance schemes.
Home Secretary David Blunkett has admitted he blundered over plans dubbed a "snooper's charter" to give a raft of public bodies in the UK access to private e-mail and mobile phone records.
The proposals are to be put on hold indefinitely in the face of huge opposition, which the home secretary conceded his department totally failed to predict. (...)
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/newsActually I recall seeing a semi-serious argument against the SSSCA on 3rd Amendment grounds. The reasoning was that mandating a "cop chip" in all electronic devices to make sure you don't do anything unapproved is effectively quartering an agent of government in your residence. Obviously quite a stretch, but no more so than any number of acts Congress has tried to justify using the Commerce Clause.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
My web browser is certainly not in a public place.
Uhhh....you may be right, your browser is not, however...
What comes into and goes out of your browser, may very well be in a public place, unless you are browsing an intranet, which since you've posted here, you're obviously not restricting yourself that much.
If you can be absolutely sure that your traffic never touches a network that has nothing to do with the government, your statement would be true. The chances of that are pretty damned slim since a lot of big pipes in the US have some affiliation with a publicly funded university.
However, while their motivation may be different, your ISP could monitor everything you do and it would be akin to retail stores with security cameras.
Please understand, I dislike the idea as much as anyone, I just dont know if there's much we can do about it.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.-Franklin
As far as the individual goes email content can be encrypted. But it looks like the government wants the headers of email and web traffic. Therefore I think there are some things that site maintainers can do to make things more secure.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
OK, let's look at those, shall we?
- 60 of 98 FBI Terrorism Cases were thrown out because of lack of evidence -- isn't the key phrase there `thrown out'? Isn't this, in fact, an example of the system working as it is supposed to?
- Village Voice Analysis [villagevoice.com] - It's the Village Voice, take it with a grain of salt. -- or a lot of salt as the case may be. The Voice is, of course, the premier voice of the Chomsky/Mailer new left. Even though it has mellowed somewhat with old age and new management, it's hardly a voice of journalistic integrity...
- Business Week Article discussing the various infringement of civil rights [businessweek.com] -- the columnist seems completely unaware of many of the details of the case (such as the fact that Muhajir has had a lawyer at every stage of the process), and of the supreme court precedent (Ex Parte Quirin). He does manage to fill in some general paranoia for a lack of knowledge of the case, but that hardly makes good journalism, now does it?
- NYTime Editorial on naming an American citizen as an illegal combatant [nytimes.com] -- more or less the same. But of course, we know the NY Times editorial page's stance on the matter.
- Ohio State graduates threatened with expulsion/arrest if they "demonstrate or heckle" during Bush's speech [yahoo.com] -- expulsion from the event, of course, but that makes rather less exciting a story, now doesn't it. Anyhow, what an unnamed official of a state school has to do with the Bush administration is unclear.
- Federal Courts strike down Bush Administrations attempt to prevent people from challenging censorship laws. -- while I'm a big fan of the RMN, and especially of Dave Kopel, this seems little more than an tendentious headline about what is essentially a contract law dispute, no? At any rate, didn't the court strike down this action, and rule that even though Mr. Stillman had signed a contract not to, he would be allowed to publish?
- Justice Department raising questions about case on John Lindh -- but nothing in this article alleges any lawbreaking, merely that some unnamed officials are alleged to have had not-very-specific `concerns'.
- Another NYTimes article on illegally detaining American Citizens [nytimes.com] -- this is no different from the other Times piece. It's amazing how many pundits are willing to declare something `unconstitutional' without bothering to read the constitutional law precedent which the administration has very clearly pointed to (Ex Parte Quirin).
IOW, there are a lot of tendentious claims here, but little backup for any of them.- DOJ wants local garbage men nationwide to store all residential and commercial trash in marked bins for 10 years so the FBI can research an individual's lifestyle
- DOJ wants power companies to keep detailed records of household power usage so the FBI can determine what time of day is best to break in and plant listening devices
- DOJ wants all White House officials to publish full transcripts of their meetings so the public knows just how much of Bush's energy policy was written by Enron
- DOJ wants all ISPs to log and retain all of your email headers and browsing history so the FBI can go through your trash without feeling nauseous.
Which of the above seems reasonable to you, your Honor?All the gummint needs to do is invest heavily in AI "helper" agents that'll assist you with your browsing, finding the best deals, talking to your friends' agents so they can let you know what your friends are doing, etc. Since they do all this for free, these agents should become very popular. Unca Shuga gets to maintain the database the agents need to perform their help, though, so they can see when disaffected youth are studying bomb design, nazism, etc. and can take appropriate pro-active action. They can also see who refuses to use these incredibly helpful little agents, and thereby focus their non-automated energies on those who obviously have something to hide.