Slashdot Mirror
DOJ Wants ISPs to Retain All Customer Records
doubledoh writes "CNET reports that the Department of Justice is 'quietly shopping around' the idea of requiring ISP's to retain all data of their customer's online activities for at least several months. The SEC already mandates that publicly traded firms retain all company emails for at least 2 years, but it looks like John Q. Public may also soon be subject to similar Constitutional violations. Big Brother, here we come."
innit?
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
...land of the free indeed. such idea's come from idiot pencil pushers with no technical savy.
Well, it seems we don't have a monopoly on idiot pencil pushers. Quote from the article:
"France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Sweden jointly submitted their data retention proposal to the European Parliament in April 2004. Such mandatory logging was necessary, they argued, "for the purpose of prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of crime or criminal offenses including terrorism.""
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
This isn't a USA-only problem. Similar pencil pusher idiots are trying to get ISPs in The Netherlands to store *ALL DATA* including e-mail, web traffic, P2P et al for 3 years!
Just the disk systems required to do so will contribute significantly to global warming...
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
We have a lovely law called the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act that forces ISPs to keep various logs and submit them on demand to investigatory agencies. The best bit about this is that the ISP can't tell anyone that they've done it.
Big brother's already here, and has intercepted you reading this comment.
Big Brother loves you.
Only old people keeps logs...
Ok, avoid the bad joke, today I found out this link about a law for ISP and how much they should log and for how much this info should be keeped.
The original link is in spanish, but in resume it talks about logs of all user activity (sited visites, information trasmited, etc) and how it should be keeped by ten years... and of course, how the ISP should take charge of all this, no the state.
>Linux is not user-friendly.
It _is_ user-friendly. It is not ignorant-friendly and idiot-friendly.
FWIW, this is standard issue in Europe already
the pun is mightier than the sword
This discussion is also going on in Europe and in the Netherlands there are ISP like XS4ALL, BIT and Interned Services who have made some calculations. The cost is pretty high, but it seems the government and the EU are still pushing this in name of preventing crime and terror.
Some Dutch and English reading material can be found here http://www.ispo.nl/home/dossiers/bewaarplicht/.
Yeah, the Swedish DOJ has considered this. One of our largest ISPs responded by saying that they would have to cover Gotland (Sweden's largest island) with disks to store it. All hail Big Brother!
In fact there are a lot of people here in the UK who do take action against speed cameras in order to disable them. There is even an organisation dedicated to this hobby. We don't need guns.
Only companies that actively trade in securities (IE: brokerage firms) are bound by this SEC rule. Regular corporations (public or private) don't have to keep mail around unless they are part of active litigation. Read and understand what you link to!
The question of privacy in the situations you mention revolves around the difference between rights and privileges. In the U.S., you have a right to personal privacy within certain boundaries. The authorities can not invade or search your home without due process. That process supposedly involves the judicial review and agreement that the authorities have a certain level of reasonable belief that evidence exists establishing your involment in criminal activities. This freedom has traditionally been extended to your mail and telephone lines. Exceptions are always made. Packages can be opened to check for bombs, police can enter your home in hot pursuit of a criminal suspect or if they have the 'reasonable' belief that someone is in danger, etc. Generally, however, two seperate branches of government were required to suspend the individuals rights - and only in individual situations. The new measures being considered in the 'war against terrorism' eliminate both the judicial oversight and the specific instance requirements previously required in order to circumvent Constitutional rights. The Government is asking us to trust them, something recent history makes difficult, and more importantly, something expressly warned against by the founders of this country. These kinds of abridgements of individual privacy rights are not slippery slopes, they are yawning chasms.
That said, a difference exists between rights and priviledges. There is also the question of public and private behaviors. Driving is not a right and takes place in public - thus there is no reasonable expectation that your driving behavior should remain free of observation. Likewise use of public spaces, transportation, and facilities. As much as I personally find it repugnant, the monitoring of my use of public resources, like the public library, is NOT a violation of my Constitutional rights. As a society, we can make laws protecting my privacy in any situation we wish, but freedom from scrunity in public places is not guarenteed by the Constitution. The fact that machines make this possible to degrees unknown or even imagined in the past does not change that basic truth. We must face the reality that, as with many issues, new technology is forcing a reevaluation of the concepts of freedom, privacy, and personal rights. We ARE in a war, not against terrorism, but against those who would shape the laws governing the use of technology to aid in the attainment of their own agendas. There is nothing new about their goals, only their methods.
billy - who tracks ISPs by street address and mph
With the upgrades in storage coming along, the goal is to save this information for at least a couple of years. Down to the packet level, depending on how much storage is available.
Just wait when these get networked together via distributed computing. One will be able to keep track around the world in real time of all connections, and where they are coming from.
The internet in 10 years will be very different than it is right now. And this is the first legal effort to push things along in a negative direction.
The FBI will want this ability very bad. They will probably get it too.