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ISPs in Argentina Must Log Everything
hjf writes "According to a new presidential decree, and effective July 31, 2005, telecom carriers in Argentina will have to log every activity, including Internet chats, website visits, e-mails, phone calls, etc, made in Argentina. The data must be stored for 10 years, and must be available to the police and intelligence agencies within one hour, 24 hours a day. The telecom companies must pay for 'everything': software, hardware, and human resources, and will be required to use state-of-the-art technology as soon as it is available. This news was known already in specialized circles, but only yesterday it was published in major media. This is causing outrage among legislators and businessmen. Lawyers claim that it violates privacy laws and Constitutional rights (article 14), and the 'presumptive innocence principle' (innocent until proven guilty)." (The Fish comes in handy yet again.)
tunnel everything through SSL or SSH.
Here's a log for ya:
....
11 April 2005: (Email Traffic: Detected. Web Traffic: Detected. Chat Traffic: Detected.)
12 April 2005: (Email Traffic: Detected. Web Traffic: Detected. Chat Traffic: Detected.)
13 April 2005: (Email Traffic: Detected. Web Traffic: Detected. Chat Traffic: Detected.)
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
The price for a dial-up account in Argentina just jumped to $3.99 for the first minute, and $1.99 for each additional minute.
No, it just means somewhere else is worse.
It's tragic. Laugh.
`We see about 20-30% of our total world-wide production of hard drives being sent to Argentina in the immediate future to fullfill the needs of this decree. After all, a slow cable modem at 1 Mbps can download 10 GB of data per day. Multiply this by ten years and by the many many people in Argentina who have broadband access, and it's a lot of disks' --Some guy at Maxtor.
As I recall, the British proposed some similarly silly rule requiring ISPs to "log everything" about 5 years ago.
I haven't heard of it since, so I presume the proposal died a whimpering quiet death unclaimed by anyone.
Free from any requirement to compromise, the Argentine president looks to one-up their old nemesis (of Falklands/Malvinas dispute) by actually trying to revive this rotting corpse of an idea.
What's next for Argentina? A clipper chip?
Of course, none of this compares with the tragedy of decades under juntas and the legacy of los desaparecidos.
Not to mention the economic collapse from naively expecting that IMF policies and democracy can co-exist.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
because, communications in Argentina are private. just like in the US, the police can't just go into your home to check for a bomb, or just tap your phone line because you *may* be doing something illegal. For this to happen, you need a court order. This new law demands that everything should be logged, and available to the police whenever they need it, so it means, you're an automatic suspect because you use the phone.
Fifteen years ago I moved to Argentina and lived there for 10 years. The government and police are extremely corrupt, almost mafia-like.
It's every [extended] family for themselves... they have clubs where you go barter for stuff with credit chips because the Argentine peso is worthless.
Ironically, I moved out right as the dollar became uber strong when the peso was devalued...
But I don't think this decree will amount to much do to the sheer impracticalities and economic costs of implementing such a massive log system. ISPs will either do their utmost to avoid following this to the letter, or go out of business.
P.S. People in Argentina don't care much about privacy in general. For instance, they literally have no concept of personal space and will stand like 1 cm from your face while talking to you.
The unofficial