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Broad Bills to Protect 'Communications Services'
mttlg writes "According to Freedom to Tinker, MA, TX, SC, FL, GA, AK, TN, and CO have introduced similar bills that would make it illegal to possess, use, etc. "any communication device to receive ... any communication service without the express consent or express authorization of the communication service provider" or "to conceal ... from any communication service provider ... the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication." (Additional legalese removed for the sake of brevity.) This would seem to outlaw NAT, VPNs, and many other security measures. In other words, don't secure your communications, just sue if you don't like who receives them." The bills define 'communication service' as just about any sort of telecom service that is provided for a charge or fee. In effect, they would extend the already-extant laws relating to theft of cable TV services to any telecom service. For example, if your ISP charges per computer connected, using a router/NAT device would be illegal if these became law.
"In effect, they would extend the already-extant laws relating to theft of cable TV services to any telecom service."
It does more than that. The language of the bills uses the word "harm" instead of "fraud". The language is vague enough that it could be twisted to be used against anyone. Just having a firewall that does nat translation is a violation of these bills.
All brought to us by the friendly folks at the MPAA. Jerks
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Is it just me, or are these new laws being passed over the last couple years seem to really deprive the average citizen of regular rights and freedoms?
With a country that seems to tout freedom at every corner, it's unfortunate that many rights and freedoms are being destroyed by people who have no clue about the general consequences of their actions.
While not having quite the range of people using services in violation of these statutes as say, people downloading mp3's, there are already so many people doing these things, and profiting on them, that it will be pointless to try to enforce this law.
Imagine for a second Bestbuy's reaction to the fact that it's popular cable-modem routers and wireless access points have all become illegal. I don't exactly see them pulling millions of dollars of hardware off the shelves without a legal fight. Nor do I see the manufacturers of those devices just giving up either.
I NAT and I'm proud of it!
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
It seems to me that the likelihood of these bills getting passed is next to nothing (of course, one can never be so sure). They were clearly introduced by technology-clueless law makers, but once they are subject to a vote, their silliness should become obvious. So I am not entirely afraid that they will succeed. If they do pass, other states are likely to pick up and follow the trail.
What is really scary to me is that, even though these bills were introduced by the ignorant, the fact that lots of legislators had the mind to introduce them in the first place is shocking. Particularly on the note of encryption, this is largely unconstitutional and hopefully, if ever passed, these bills will be challenged by (financially) enabled individuals.
How can such a thing even hold up when it not only criminalizes most existing telecom infrastructure, violates the 4th Amendment by tangent? Of course, we do live in a DMCA-cursed USA...
Join Tor today!
Just wait for John Ashcroft to announce the only legal services after these laws take effect:
http://www.nsa.gov/patriot-proxy/
http://www.fbi
Trolling is a art,
Wouldn't it be illegal for ISP's to bust SSL users?
You are not the customer.
From the article:
I'm not concealing the origin or destination of communication, in any of these cases. If I'm using a router to share my network connection, the origin/destination of my ISP's communications is whatever box is doing the routing. After that, if my router routes a copy of the data from my ISP to another PC in my home, that's okay: the transmission between my router and my ISP is complete, and the new transmission is between my router and one or more PCs on my network.
I've always held that, as far as ISPs are concerned, they're responsible for supporting their network until it reaches the access point of my network--whether that's a single PC, a PC that shares its internet connection, a router, whatever. After that, I can accept the liability of supporting my own equipment. This should be handled the same way.
Actually, better yet, it should be shot down outright. But that's more optimistic than I tend to be about such things.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
This bill is intended for radio, and is to prevent you from having a scanner.
/. post is valid - the law of unintended consequences comes to play - VPN, NAT, proxies all could be banned by wording that broad. Perhaps that is a good thing - overbroad wording might just get it thown out.
/. will grow a clue. Time to start adding comms gear to my armory.
However, unless they change the current law, having an Amateur Radio Operator's license trumps this - being a ham I can have a scanner, due to hams' role in emergency communications.
However, this is just like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1987 - it may be illegal to eavesdrop on cellular communications, but it did'nt really stop anybody from doing it. Going from an insecure system (AMPS) to more secure systems (GSM, CDMA) did that.
However, the point of the
Yeah, and moderators on
www.eFax.com are spammers
What about phones, radios, etc? As long as you don't have "express permission" from the service provider, you're in trouble. I am glad we in Holland have a law called the "Right to reception", which basically means that if something is transmitted into the ether, it's fair game for anyone to receive. This law is quite fundamental, almost constitutional, and has even be used to uphold the right to use radar detectors to avoid speed traps. The law grants you the unconditional right to receive anything, including the radar signal.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
my linux pc IS a single PC... it routes traffic to other machines internally, but that is my own business and no one elses. I only have one machine connected to the internet, but have 6 more connected to that machine.
You see all the pussies that can't get over the fact that our towers came down. Are using there fear as an excuse to pass thousands of laws, that don't affect them because there non-technical ninnies, and sadly the rest of America is dumb enough to let this crap happen under the guise of patriotism I bet it was patriotic to kill a jew in Germany during world war II, patriotism isn't always a good thing.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
I used to work for a small ISP/Telco, and my boss always liked the Common Carrier status because it exempted them from liability. Apparently big ISPs don't understand this yet. If you monitor it, you're taking some responsibility for what's in it.
This is really bad.
I hope the states where I run networks aren't next.
This allows companies to make more money off us by the threat of lawsuits or report to the authorities. If someone sells me internet access at a specific bandwidth, they should expect I can and may use up to that allotted bandwidth. They are selling me bandwidth, not individual ethernet ports.
Things like ssh-tunneling to hide IM and WWW traffic while I'm at work, as well as improving the security of my networks by hiding the endpoints of my ipsec tunnels behind nat boxes also becomes illegal.
So, in summary, we're trading utility (let's face it, a lot of these vpn/nat apps make things easier to handle - voip tunneling, smtp tunneling, very nice stuff handled with both vpns and nat), AND security (why should all my network devices sit exposed?) so that companies can make more profits, and we can be hauled to jail for making it harder to snoop our communications?
This is ludicrous. Where will the fascism stop?
to conceal ... from any communication service provider ... the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication.
I believe that this item is probably not intended to go after NAT'd computers, but to try to cut back on spammers using broadband connections.
If this is the reason, they should be applauded for trying something new. This law WOULD make forged headers illegal.
One problem is that this also constrains anonymous peer-to-peer systems such as Freenet. One of it's strengths is that when you receive a request for a file from an IP, you don't know if that IP origionated the request. If you don't have it, you pass on the request and the node you pass it onto doesn't know if you requested it.
This does make it impossible for a "communications service provider" to determine the origin or destination of the file or information request.
If this is the intended outcome, it is a major violation of a civil liverty we have been appreciating lately.
tasty and delicious
Just because your ISP is stuck in the 90's doesn't mean you need to drag everybody else down with you. Personal servers are what make the internet great, not giant media conglomorates feeding you exactly what their advertisers want. You'll note that the most useful webpages are usually the ones put up by some devoted guy on some particular topic in his spare time, not the multi-million dollar popup/flash/trendy keyword extravaganzas that big companies bought into.
of course you can just run your server on your ISP's website (if they offer one), but that's usually rather limited if you have a large number of infrequenty accessed files or dynamic content, and lord help you if your website needs a database backend to keep everything convienent yet manageable.
Sorry about the rant, but I just hate when people get suckered into thinking they're nothing more than "consumers" that aren't allowed to contribute to the public good.
I read the internet for the articles.
...only outlaws will have firewalls. If this bullshit spreads to California, damn straight I will keep my ipfw/nat firewall up!
Time to make this a very uncomfortable time for your state assemblypersons and senators if you live in the affected states. Geek power stopped the Berman Bill, geek power is forcing the feds to revisit the DMCA, geek power is a pretty amazing thing when unleashed.
The one thing that makes the least sense about these bills is that firewalling+nat is one of the tools needed to combat worms and exploits. Everyone is so damn interested in "protecting our Internet infrastructure from exploits, worms and viruses" yet these same clowns are taking away a very important tool that real people can use to make a real difference against these problems.
And what if you are still running Windows NT4, for whatever reason? The workaround Microsoft gives people for the recent RPC vulnerability is to keep the server in the private IP space and firewall off the ports in the 13x range! You can't do that without a NAT!!!
Time to fight this and fight it hard. Whatever you think about whatever other issues are going on around us, this is serious shit.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Why can't the cable and DSL provider settle on a reasonable limit, such as "no more than 4 computers from the same household"? That way, it allows 99% of persons with routers to do what they want to do (allow multiple family members to surf the net, or allow them to surf the net from any of their computers).
The problem is that most cable companies are accustomed to charging more for multiple connections. They are similar to the telephone company (ATT) before the government had to step in. What they refuse to realize is that most customers know that it does not "cost" the company any additional money when they watch cable on another TV, or surf from the livingroom instead of the home-office.
Though, they currently have every legal right to demand that only one device is attached to their line, most persons know that there is no legitimacy to the demand. It is pure greed.
From the texas bill
(a) A person commits an offense if, with the intent to harm or defraud a communication service provider, the person:
(1) obtains or uses a communication service without:
(A) obtaining the authorization of the provider; or
(B) making a payment to the provider in the
amount normally charged by the provider for the service; or
[(3)] tampers with, modifies, or maintains a
modification to a communication device provided by or installed by the provider
That is the entirity of the definition of a bad guy in this bill, as it is currently proposed as of the time I'm writing this.
So, you have to, with "intent to harm or defraud," "[use] a communication service without""obtaining the authorization of the provider; or making a payment to the provider in the amount normally charged by the provider for the service; or tampers with, modifies, or maintains a modification to a communication device provided by or installed by the provider." I put it all together for ye who don't want to link.
So, to be even MORE clear, this only effects people who are trying to harm or defraud an ISP, etc, by using service without authorization.
Does a VPN "harm or defraud" an ISP? NO
Does ssh "harm or defraud" an ISP? NO
Does posting anonymously anywhere, or any of the other things being complained about, "harm or defraud" an ISP? NO
I don't have the time to quote and translate each and every bill out there, but I do certainly recommed actually reading them before deciding the bills will make it illegal to brush your teeth. Knee-jerk, anyone? Know what you're having an opinion about, before forming that opinion.
The key words in these draft bills is that these are in regards to the user acting "with intent to defraud" and is written to imply that it is the use of technologies "to defraud" that is the crime, not simple possesion. The bigger risk is that this bill could be used to tack on additional charges to some other crime (e.g. if you submitted a fraudulent tax return via an encrypted channel). Unfortunately, some cable vendors have very restrictive usage agreements so it may be quite easy find yourself technially guilty of "fraud".
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
I'd warrant that a lot of the terms of this law that apply to computers and are actually valid (i.e. not arreasting somebody for ssh chaining withing their lan or something ridiculous), are actually already enforcable.
To use the example of using NAT when the provider charges per computer, this will be spelled out in the contract, and therfore the company would be within their rights to sue you for breach of contract, and most likely have criminal charges brought against you for fraud.
While I'm on the subject of now allowing NAT on the network (which my current provider does - for mostly valid reasons - the intent is to prevent one person in the halls of residence paying, and the others freeloading off the same connection), I have a main computer, and a headless, openBSD box to act as a firewall/NAT, I also have a networked printer (connected via ethernet, and accessible through port forwarding remotely), and a handheld with ethernet card. All of these are used by me and there is no intent to screw the university out of money, and yet technically, just browsing the net on my handheld through the main computer is a breach of contract.
Okay.. rant over.. move along
Wouldn't this also make SPAM illegal? Or at least provide the legal means to force spammers to provide accurate headers?
</fantasy>
In a dark basement, the door is suddenly kicked in by state troopers. A man surrounded by computers with a broadband connection is busted as a terrorist for 'concealing the source of communications'. In tears, the spammer is taken away to rot in jail.
<fantasy>
Okay, it's not like the government would actually use this law for something as useful as busting spammers, but sometimes it's nice to dream....
But on a more serious note, anonymity has been considered a constitutional right by the Supreme Court for quite some time now, and I don't think this law would stand up to constitutional scrutiny.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
The public already decided once that the "Common Carriers" provided wires not services when they broke up AT&T and deregulated the Baby Bells. Why does it seem that there's a purposefull effort to undo all that effort? Could it be that the media companies that needed deregulation to get off the ground now don't want to play with the same rules that let them get in the game in the first place?
What's needed is a real person in charge of the FCC [Lessing anyone!] To streamline the processes and remove some of the contradictions [i.e. ATT banned from local phone but owning cable w/o sharing, etc.]
Ignoring any issues of stupidity regarding this proposal, there is one practical point that cannot be ignored.
The IP address space isn't big enough for all the nodes on the internet. NAT alleviates this problem by "sharing" IP addresses. Remove NAT, and you're going to have to disconnect most computers from the internet.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Interesting times, indeed.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
You are a prime example of what's wrong with this country. It doesn't affect me, so why should I give a shit. Me me me me me... The world doesn't revolve around you. These laws (were they to become laws) would affect a lot of people, and in an adverse way.
My ISP doesn't give a fat rat's ass if I run an email server. I don't allow open relays, so it deals with about 5 emails a day. Big whoop...
I'm kind of surprised they haven't bitched about my 1-2 GB/day Usenet habit, though...
According to this the MA proposed super-DMCA bill has been referred to the committee on criminal justice and there is a public hearing scheduled on April 2. Doesn't sound dead to me (as one other poster claimed).
Does anyone know how people can get into that meeting and testify? I'd hope some quick grass-roots opposition could kill this.
The device won't be outlawed, using it without a fee will be. BestBuy sells cable modems too.
The problem is that this outlaws anything not explcitly alowed by your telcom. While doing some things has already got people Raided by the FBI, this will extend things considerably. It essentially redefines the alrady broken definition of "common carrier" to the point where you can't do squat. Instant messaging, VoIP, secure shells and more will all be outlawed or provided as a $ervice open to your provider's clerks. Looks like we won't have to worry about the internet making a real free press or helping people protect their fourth amendment rights.
The smarter you make the internet, the less you can do.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
IIRC, the FCC recently defined Internet service as an "information service" rather than a "communication service" so that they didn't have to apply common-carrier fairness restrictions to ISPs, notably cable providers. Is that subtlety likely to torpedo some of these bills that refer to "comminucation service provider", or does the bills' language sudestep this trap?
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
"Unlawful access device." Any type of device which is primarily designed for the purpose of defeating or circumventing any technology used by the provider to protect transmissions from unauthorized receipt, acquisition, interception, access, decryption, disclosure, communication, transmission or re-transmission.
I don't know how NAT/SSH/Proxy server can be classified as an Unlawful Access Device under this definition. Sounds much more like they're going after cable descrablers and the like...
I have read them.
...and all it will take is one lawyer to interpret these laws in the general mindset as opposed to the assumed mindset for these to be abused...
IANAL however I have friends who are...and have been educated in the ways of legalese...
These bills are written exceedingly ambiguously and could be applied to almost any manner of data communicaitons...
There are several key points (and subpoints of more restrictive points) which if read in the state of mind they are attempting to address, are rather fair and intellegent...
However, if you read these points with an open interpretation of what these laws are being applied to, they are ambiguous enough to potentially be applied to encryption, port forwarding, and many other privacy and security related means of data transmission...
What's left unspecified is the definition of "harm."
Lawyers and lawmakers understand specific connotations of the word 'harm' as it relates to commerce, even if we laypeople don't.
I think it's rather apparent that the my use of an alternate IP telephony company results in lost revenue for my ISP.
That's lost potential revenue. You're not depriving the ISP of anything they would have otherwise had an inalienable claim to.
Those of you who are a bit older may remember the likes of SuperTV which used to broadcast an encoded signal on the air. Many built receive decoders. SuperTV didn't last long. HBO used to broadcast on the Multi-Point Distribution service on 2154 MHz. Anyone remember those "stopsign" boards and coffee can antennas? Those were illegal too under a twisted interpretation the FCC made using certain clauses of the original Radio Secrecy section of the Communications Act of 1934.
No, the FCC is not your friend. The airwaves are not free in the USA. Ask any Scanner enthusiast what they think of the holes in the coverage of their scanners. Ask anyone who tries to receive Mobile Data Terminal (MDT) police traffic these days.
Here in the USA, the airwaves are not free for you to receive legally. I guess practical realities such as detection, enforcement, or even the old maxim of radio ("never say anything on the radio you wouldn't want the whole world to hear") are lost on our legislatures. This is where ignorant "feel good" legistlation will get you. I don't know whether we should laugh or cry in the face this kind of stupidity.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
The argument of "it's ok, because they won't care about your little NAT box" is absolutely, positively, definitely, not good enough. If you're ok with being made a criminal just as long as nobody comes after you, fine. But it's sure as hell not good enough for me.
As you say, this kind of law should only apply when actions are performed "with intent to defraud". But that isn't what it says (and yes, I did read the bill. Suggest you do the same). The article written by Prof Felten points to the relevant clause, which says none of that. Possession of equipment which conceals the intended origin or destination of a communication from the communication service provided is proposed to be made an offense. Period.
What is seems to me is, this law looks like a classic trojan horse: there's stuff about preventing theft of service, yadda yadda, with intent to defraud, all of which looks perfectly reasonable. But then there's this other, mostly unrelated and egregious stuff buried in it.
Suggestion to ISPs: if you're really concerned about theft of service by people "splitting the bill" start charging by the megabyte actually transferred. Then it works the other way around. The more bandwidth people (or their neighbors) use, the more they pay. If people want to open up a Wi-Fi access point to passers by, ok. All good. More revenue to the ISP whenever anybody actually uses it.
NAT isn't outlawed by these bills, but any VPN technology is, as well as any access to proxies via SSL, since that 'conceals' the souce/destination.
Laws like this are quite disturbing, and if enacted could cripple business.
- Imagine not being able to do business at your local bank, because they can't use their VPN to communicate with the main office?
- How about not being able to fill a prescription at the drugstore, becase they can't have a secure channed as requireed by HIPPA back to the main office?
- Imagine not being able to execute a trade through your broker, because the financial industry has a HEAVY reliance on encrypted communications channels, partly to comply with teh GLBA.
Laws like this contradict so many existing laws that if it does get passed, it wont against any legitimate bush-back by a large company. The real problem is that small companies and individuals are ripe for persecution.
Does anyone remember Dimitri Skylarov?