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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)
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.
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.
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.