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Lycos Germany to No Longer Store IP Data
quaker5567 writes "The Register is carrying the story that Lycos Germany says it will no longer store dynamic IP addresses of its customers. According to the German Tele Services Data Protection and Telecommunications Act, ISPs are only allowed to store communications data for accounting purposes. Apparently, there is no requirement for German ISPs to keep a record of IP addresses. A decision by German ISPs not to keep logs on IP addresses would be extremely controversial as the entertainment industry is increasingly demanding that ISPs disclose the names of suspected file sharers."
...think this is a good move on the part of ISPs to quit doing the government's dirty work for tracking down criminals. It's not a company's job to keep tabs on their customers for the sole purpose of turning them over to law enforcement.
On the minus side, it is very likely some kind of political backlash will occur and a law will be passed requiring ISPs to keep much more detailed records than they do even now...
-py
It is quite a sad state of affairs when a company does something that is popular with the people, and yet there is controversy because another company doesn't want it to be done.
This is the most artificial sense of the word "controversy," because it is completely artificial.
Sad, sad state of affairs.
fifth sigma, inc.
"A decision by German ISPs not to keep logs on IP addresses would be extremely controversial as the entertainment industry is increasingly demanding that ISPs disclose the names of suspected file sharers."
Entertainment industry be damned. What we should worry about is network and systems security, DDoS, botnets, zombies, and of course SPAM and PORN. I hope we will not have to block *.de on our SMTP relays and TCP/IP firewalls like we had with *.cn and *.ne. Hopefully Germans will know how to be responsible with their privacy and lack of control. Only time will tell.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
If this IP block is known to be safe from identification, its certainly possible that crackers could choose to scan the area more heavily for exploits and rootable machines, making the block a source for malicious traffic.
On the other hand, it should make quite a selling point for tech-savvy customers in the area when in comparison with other ISP's. This may be effective protection against copyright lawsuits, providing enough obscurity that the regional enforcement agency choose not to pursue cases.
It should be interesting to see if this trend continues to other ISP's, and what effects occur as a result of this change
Business Voyeur
While everybody is obsessed about 'music' and 'file sharing', its time to think about what effect this will have on law enforcement... E.g. how will the police trace a criminal without the precious info?
They're going to haul their laptop, equiped with Wi-Fi, to some random unsecured access point on the far side of town and do it there. In a situation like that, logs are almost entirely useless.
An effective signature identifies a particular user amongst a base of thousands.
"As customers we must demand that our ISPs no keep long term IP records. There are plenty of options to connect to the internet and we as consumers must tell our ISPs that we will make this an important part of our bandwidth purchasing decision."
So what's your opinion of Morgan Stanley being fined over 1 billion for not keeping email around? It seems like the same sort of case, yet the sentiment there was they were probably guilty, so it was ok. With copyright infringement, the sentiment is, the users are probably guilty, but they should be protected anyway.
Vote for Pedro
As customers we must demand that our ISPs no keep long term IP records.
If you do this, you have to promise not to complain when their DHCP server starts churning out new IP addresses to you ever day or so, screwing the folks who use dynamic DNS to run servers. Just something to keep in mind. Some people do get benefit out of static addresses.
If you're smart enough to run a server your certainly smart enough to A) pay for a static address B) set up dynamic redirection.
Aside from the fact that this would never happen in the US you've brought up essentially a stupid, non-point.
Quack, quack.
While it's nice to know that this will make it more difficult for the **AA to come knocking on your door, this removes one of the three big A's in security: auditing. If a machine with a dynamic IP address is engaging in malicious behavior, this makes it much more difficult for the ISP to identify the account associated with the behavior. This is a real problem if you want to disable machines that are compromised and are being used for spamming/DDOS/whatever. I hope that there are provisions for the ISP to keep the data for a short period of time and/or keep interesting data available for investigative purposes.
For what it's worth pr0n has been with us always and likely will be with us for along time to come. It's the only asset some people have and they will market it.
Any person with less-than honorable intentions won't do so from the comforts of their own home.
They're going to haul their laptop, equiped with Wi-Fi, to some random unsecured access point on the far side of town and do it there. In a situation like that, logs are almost entirely useless.
And here it is. Of course this explanation would appear, despite the fact that if this was the case then this story wouldn't be an issue at all. All of the file sharers could just grab their laptops and head to a wifi location.
Of course we know that is nonsense - criminals generally are dumb, and the police endlessly bust child-porn rings, as well as find people who communicate with children through IM services, via trusty IP logs and warrants. Even outside of this, though, forcing a criminal to go to a specific wifi point, itself easily identifiable, is vastly more of a lead to go on than "somebody in the state of New York". If you know that somebody sent a serious death threat from Joe's Coffee Shop at 2 in the afternoon, you can connect the dots and build some evidence.
Nonsense. There is nothing at all similar about the two.
Morgan Stanley was trashing e-mails, likely so that they could not be used against them in court, at least to some extent. It might be argued that if it weren't for the possibility that they could be used against them, it would be something that might be valuable for them to keep.
There is nothing valuable about the IP data for the ISP after some reasonable period of time. It has a very short shelf life. Neither is there anything in it to use against the ISP. There is no reason to keep it longer than necessary. Any ISP who was concerned about the privacy of their customers would dump it once it was clear they had no need of it.
My ISP doesn't keep the information long term. There is no intention to create problems for anyone. It's just that once the data is no longer necessary, it is dumped.
I can't believe all this crap I'm hearing about "what if somebody does something bad and the ip address isn't logged" shit.
What fucking country did you grow up in where monitoring your every move IN CASE you MIGHT break a law was tolerated. When did we let our privacy and freedom get JACKED from us?
Real IDs, IP monitoring, etc... This kind of shit was UNTHINKABLE here in the US before the 1980's, and now, because we believe everything we're told about bad things happening if we don't do it, we've given away all of our freedoms and tolerate monitoring and intrusion that was considered science fiction material 20 years ago.
Other countries are NOT following our example- Spain didn't turn itself into a police state after the train bombings, politicians there went as far as to say "we are NOT at war", whereas, hear in the US, politicians say just the opposite, and we buy that shit!!!
Land of the Free, my ass....
</flame>
The other day I was able to walk down the street, go into a shop and buy some milk - get this - WITHOUT ONE PERSON ASKING ME TO IDENTIFY MYSELF!.
Can you imagine all the possible marketing information I squandered selfishly by not informing a central database about this action (this report not included). The cash I used was totally UNTRACEABLE!!! it could have come from anywhere. Not only that, but the person behind the counter was happy to undertake the transaction without me identifying myself (obviously some kind of terrorist).
I could have been going to use the milk for a BOMB!, would the authorities have had any way to check this? NO!!!!
When did everything become like this?
Oh wait - it has always been like this in Democracies.
Move along... there is no sig here.
24/7 camera surveillance in your (not "you", specifically) would be another.
" In conclusion, my opinion is that ISPs should be required to destroy that data as soon as it's only purpose is to inform against their own customers."
In principal, I agree with you. However, as a server admin trying to fight off attacks from the Russians, Koreans and Chinese script kiddies, I disagree.
It's a fool that believes that the internet is like air, in that once you speak something it should evaporate into the air as vibration. A fool. It's not the record companies you should be worried about, it's the script kiddies and the real crack-ers. If you only knew what they do, you would want a way to track them.
I know that the people, not unlike yourself, who use the internet for downloading "Star Wars" think that everything should be anonymous and so forth but, truth be told, there are other uses for bandwidth. Like making money. If you can't track people posthumous, you're dead. It's the last line of defense between you and a would-be cracker. The only thing stopping most people who COULD crack-n-hack is the fact that they know they can be found out.
It would be like you being able to walk around, completely invisible. The thing stopping you from robbing a bank is the cameras right? (oh wait...you've probably got morals)
Of course, I guess you could log IPs from the other side but...but...but...
You'll have that sometimes...
I know that the people, not unlike yourself, who use the internet for downloading "Star Wars"
/32s.
You're wrong on that point, but I certainly can't fault you for that assumption considering where we are.
Of course, I guess you could log IPs from the other side but...but...but...
Hmm... well, this would help you if all you needed/wanted to do was try to stop the next attack. It's useless (as you are well aware) if the ISP that owns that particular IP has no idea who used it. It's also useless in preventing the next attack if it is a dynamic IP unless you are willing to block more than
I empathize with the desire to make the internet a safer place. I really do.
But tracking everyone's actions on the internet does not make the world a better place. It has the potential to make *your* job/bottom line/whatever better and that's not something I care about. (Nothing personal)
Here before all but 8486 of you.
I don't think it's funny, no, it's serious. What the heck do you have against consenting adults making, distributing, and viewing erotic imagery and texts? To the point you classify it with spam and trojans, cite it as worse than those things in fact, and think you get to BLOCK IT AT THE ROUTER? Just what have you been smoking?
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Well that _was_ once true.
People like Gestapo-minister Otto Schily and his lackey Brigitte Zypries as minister of justice
don't give a flying f... about the constitiuon and everybody applauds.
Besides from DMCA-like plans to give "Copyright holders" the right to request customer data from ISPs,
they are pushing laws to require ISPs to not only store IPs but also all communication data including visited URLs. email header info, IM data, SMSes, telephone connection data and much more stuff.
The only thing they aren't sure about is how many years ISPs and telcos will be required to store all that information and who pays for it.
Btw. they are also pushing to build nationwide DNA- and fingerprint databases.
The East-German STASI and the Gestapo would have had wet dreams about the infrastructure that is going to be created.
I think it isn't necessary to point out that all this is done "to fight islamistic terrorism"
and to "protect our freedom".
Apropos: because of their severeness the anti-terror laws passed after 9/11 were limited in time and to be reevaluated after five years.
Since they were such a success (not proven), now minster Schiliy and others suggest to keep them forever without a mandatory reevaluation and even extend their scope/power.
Do I even have to conclude this rant by saying that I am much more worried about
the actions of our politicans than about terrorist attacks?
But hey, as long as you have nothing to hide..
BTW, bear in mind that data protection is nothing less than part of a constitutional civil/human right in most civilized societies, making it illegal (even for the state to tolerate) that unnecessary records are being kept on anyone by public officials or private entities. Thus creating (let alone preserving) traffic logs by flat-fee ISPs (other than for very short-term performance/quality assurance or intrusion detection) that can only be used for spying on users or clandestine gathering of data for unsolicited commercial exploitation have no legitimate purpose whatsoever.
Yep.
And the worst thing is, Schily backs those antiterror laws about like that:
Schily stands somewhere in the wood and repeatly hits a drum.
The Germans ask: why are you doing this?
Schily answers: to keep the elephants... err... terrorists away
Germans: but there are no terrorists in Germany
Schily: see, it's working!
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
You are partly right. Yet, writing from (and living) outside of Germany, I have to tell you that Germany is still a shining example for privacy, freedom of speech and other personal freedoms.
Examples: When was the last time you have seen a public CCTV in a German street or public place? In London (where I live) there is nearly no street left without one, and the Authorities now want to introduce microphones as well.
Yesterday, we read about a Professor being fired for stating his opinions in public. In Germany, Professors cannot be fired. IANAL, but I think we are about the only country worldwide that has academic freedom carved into the first page of the constitution. ("Forschung und Lehre sind frei.")
As to the personal ID cards. I don't think the nationwide DNA databases you mention will be coming anytime soon (the public outcry was too big). On the other hand, the personal ID cards we have today are a very good thing in my eyes. You have to keep in mind that there are actually good uses for these things. In the UK, everybody is scared that public ID cards will be introduced, and how Orwellian that will be. But they forget that, up to now, they have to bring drivers licences, bank statements (! -- you would never have to disclose your monetary situation in Germany, just to rent a flat, for example), hell, even birth certificates for every minor participation in public life, like voting, renting a flat or bying booze. And these ways are still less secure than a personal ID.
To end this: Be happy about your Personalausweis. And get less paranoid about Schily. If we would have a conservative government (as Britain de facto has), we would already have all the things you (and I) are so scared about.