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Michigan First With A Law That Could Outlaw VPNs
zaren writes "Holy frell, Taco, we're gonna be criminals! I was checking out Freedom to Tinker after reading the posting about that multi-state anti-VPN-style legislation, and I saw a new posting that says that Michigan has ALREADY passed such legislation, and it goes into effect on MONDAY, MARCH 31, 2003 . Guess I better tighten down the base station and batten down the hatches..."
(b) Conceal the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service. What were legislators smoking when they wrote that clause? That's so ridiculously overbroad that it could even be interpreted to make it illegal to call someone from a payphone without telling them where you are.
Repeal the DMCA!
this would also make calling cards illegal, since every time I get a call from one it comes from texas, not nevada where the call originates.
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
This is ridiculous. In a broad sense, this would outlaw an PPP connection that assigns an ISP customer a different IP address with every session. Not only that but the nature of such legislation would outlaw virtual domains using Apache and could be applied to the way the Internet has come to work in a limited IP space. I mean, in order to find out who is who on a shared IP web server, you would have to have access to the configuration files.
With so many domains sharing IP addresses or having IP addresses provided by big companies such as HE there is an amount of obfuscation built in to the DNS system to allow flexibility on the host side. Can't they get busy with spam legislation instead?
(b) Conceal the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service.
Apparently it is legal to have a concealed weapon, but having a concealed cell phone or disabling caller ID violates the law.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
I see no benefits but only complications in the institution of marriage. Legally, it makes it harder to break up and discourages people to do so even when kids and their own mental health would actually benefit from it. Psychologically it is even more offensive: a sort of proof of ownership.
Originally marriage meant that the wife became husband's property (instead of her father's, that is), but I guess these days it stipulates that the husband is wife's property too.
I find this really offensive. I don't want my significant one to stick around just because there is a band of metal around one of her fingers. She's not my property and I'm not hers. She's free to do whatever she wants. If she decides to walk out on me, I have nothing to say about it and vice versa.
The owls are not what they seem
Here I sit using at least two computers simultaneously for the simple reason that they both do different jobs. In my house there are four devices capable of being connected to my network hub and that in turn connects to the cable modem I have. Given that it is just me using all these at the same time why would it make sense to charge me for each computer? There's just me. Now, if I set up a dial up so that other users can run off my cable then yes that is bad and a law that said I could not resell the service I have bought would be perfectly reasonable, but this is my house, my connection and they are my machines. I pay for a fat(ish) pipe to the outside world. Does the water company charge me more because I have more sinks than my next door neighbour? They may charge me more if I use more water but having more sinks doesn't matter, it is the flow that matters. Same should be true with a network. I am happy to have a capped bandwidth (500Kbs) because I am paying a flat rate for that. However, the four computers I have can't get more data through than one on its own could so what is the problem? What happens if I want to play around with a beowulf cluster? Are they going to outlaw clusters unless you can get some special exemption? You certainly wouldn't want to have to get an IP address for every machine in a big cluster. Oh, and what about the company providing the connection, are they going to ensure that if I have to pay for individual connections for each machine they will still protect me from all the twits who probe my system on a daily basis and do a better job than I can myself with my gateway? This bill is only going to benefit the money grabbing service providers and those idiots who love to try to root machines.
:-)
IMHO of course
The point is not whether it would stand up in court, the point is that it is a form of legalized harrassment. If the cops, or anyone else in the law enforcement power structure, doesn't like you for any reason valid or not, they have just one more tool to fuck you over with impunity.
Sometimes just calling you a terrorist is more trouble than its worth, probably gets the FBI and the Dept of the Fatherland involved which might actually question a few too many baseless accusations. This law just keeps their options open.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
you see, when you are buying access, they are billing for you for it but not really ready to let you use all the bandwith they sold you, it's like an all-you-can-eat resteurant that will kick you out after you've eaten 6 pizzas. and if you are crypting the transfers they can't just be bad boys on the block and eavesdrop and then say that you are bad warezor shuu shuu go away.
now, i'm perfectly happy with this kind of arrangment at my current place of living (student foundation provided) and the net access they give (100mbit, minimal fee, and no, it's not really paid from outrageous university fees, because here we pay around 120e per year to attend to it) and the fact that i can't use all the bandwith from it all the time if i don't wanna get disconnected. but i perfectly knew this when i signed up, and i would be fiercely pissed off if i paid good $$$ for connection and didn't get what i paid for and especially if i was told that crypting the transfers was a no-no(you could just as well be mailing all your mail in transparent envelopes.. which the postal office might actually like?).
the law sounds just as ridiculous as the law that was in greek to forbid videogames.. all the bad things it would outlaw are things that should be already covered by other laws(fraud & etc).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Now, what is an "unlawful telecommunications access device"? That is answered under 750.219a which is entitled:
Section 219 defines an unlawful device as:
I read this to mean to hijack someone else's "telecommunication device".
If you read the section further, this applies to illegal cable descramblers and stuff like that.
I think we can all agree that FRAUD is bad.
The
There may be a get-out here - if the parent post is giving the exact wording, it is the origin or destination of the *service*, not the telecommunication itself that can't be concealed. This means you can conceal your cell phone, but you can't conceal which teleco you bought it from.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I fail to see anything in this amendment that applies to VPNs. It appears to be specifically designed to target phone phreaking. It's all about screwing with telecoms services. VPNs don't do that.
They don't obtain telecoms services without intent to pay (1a), they don't conceal the origin or destination of the traffic (1b), and they don't intercept, disrupt, re-transmit, or otherwise fuck with your, or anyone else's, service (1c).
Unless you've deliberately cracked your ISP in order to run your VPN, you've not fallen foul of this law.
Get some perspective.
[Interestingly, this does appear to make IP address spoofing illegal - but I consider that to be a good thing.]
All the problems you list are due to human stupidity. Even SARS. The patient zero was somewhere in China and the local politicians failed to take action in fear of falling into disfavour. More concentrated stupidity can be found in the form of Kim Jong Il, GWB, Chirac and other politicians worldwide.
Now, there is an excellent record of 6000 years of human stupidity that we call history. In fact, human stupidity most likely extends even beyond the written records and if we go really far back in time we arrive at the point when "human race" was just a little more advanced kind of an ape. And we definitely can agree that by human standards apes are pretty dim, aren't they?
So, in conclusion, most of the recent events can be blamed on stupidity and since the massive human stupidity in the past has not brought on the end of the world ago it won't do so this time either. So, don't worry.
The owls are not what they seem
You got it. You need to read this legislation in the light of all the other legislation out there, signed into law or proposed. A Police State needs for everyone to be a criminal on paper, to have that potential,to be able to use that against them. Look at oregons proposed policial demonstration law. Walk in the street in a demonstration, you are facing 25 years to life. Use a normal router, with how it normally works, you are a criminal. Go into patriot act 1 and now 2, which they are migrating to different other bills to get it passed. Misdemeanors can be classed as supporting terrorism. You really don't want to be classed as a terrorist. You can become an un-person very quickly, and it wouldn't be in there if they weren't planning on using it, even more extensively than they are now. The gestalt with computers in general is that computers allow anonymous and semi anonymous and easy communications for the average person. Police States don't like that.
This is REAL stuff in all our faces. You can't keep up with it now,laws, laws,laws and more new laws, daily. It's at the federal level and all the state levels, assaults against born-with rights, just being a normal person, are fully underway, it's not theoretical or tin foil hat. This article is an example of just another one. Add 'em all up. Pretty spooky.
Thanks for sending that letter, looking forward to see what they say, if you get a credible response.
Once the DMCA passed it became obvious that law makers actually ARE perpetrating the insane. Rights are destroyed when people hear about it happening and just hit the snooze button. It's happening right now.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Shit, man, I'm 23 and have no criminal record, but I had no trouble thinking up 4 'felonies' that I've committed.
Dyolf Knip
As I read it, and as others have pointed out, the new law makes an instant criminal out of (probably) 95%+ of the DSL and cable DSU users in the affected state. Anyone who uses a NAT-capable device (myself included) could be in a most uncomfortable position due to crap like this.
That's the bad news. The good news is that, given the sheer volume of people that already have NAT-type hookups, I don't see how this can possibly be effectively enforced. Even if the affected states try to make an example out of a few folks, it'll probably get appealed until doomsday.
I predict widespread 'civil disobedience' at first, followed by an effective court challenge that will overturn such legislative lunacy.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Please don't confuse marrage as recognised by the state with commitment or lack therof on the part of a couple.
I know people who are married in every sense of the word (including holding a wedding) who happen to lack a marrage license. In one case the couple didn't want the tax hit, credit entanglement, or to deal with community property issues; in another the couple happens to be two men and thus cannot get a legal marrage.
On the other hand I know people who seem to marry everyone they date for more than a month or two. Typically they get a divorce within a year or so. Divorce is VERY easy in most states these days if there are no substantial assets or children involved.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
And if i was not a slashdot reader, I would not know about this law! The typical lets-not-tell-them-so-they-will-be-screwed-when-we -catch-them mentality. Anyway, I thought that this link might be a good place for fellow Michigan slashdotters to look at. Remember the article on counting machines behind a NAT ? Well, at least counter-inteligence would be less likely to suspect you/me/user as a mulit-machine law breaker.
I guess I really don't care, now do I? Come and find me if you really care that much!
This useless space for sale, inquire at front desk.